The Pharos token (PROS) surged 47.8% to $0.9457 on May 8 after simultaneous listings on South Korea’s two largest exchanges, Upbit and Bithumb. Trading volume exploded by 209.6% to $28.7 million, pushing the token’s market cap to $127.5 million and its CoinGecko rank to #255.
Upbit announced it would add PROS to its KRW, BTC, and USDT markets at 8:30 p.m. Korea time, with deposits and withdrawals opening within 90 minutes. The exchange imposed standard safeguards for the debut: buy orders restricted for five minutes after trading starts, sell orders capped at no more than 10% below the previous close, and only limit orders allowed for the first two hours. Users were warned to send PROS exclusively through the Pharos network to avoid delayed returns.
Bithumb simultaneously added PROS to its Korean won market, doubling local access. The back-to-back listings follow a busy week for Upbit, which also added B3 and Dogwifhat (WIF) to its won market.
Pharos is an EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain employing an asynchronous BFT-based proof-of-stake consensus. Designed for real-world assets and Web3 applications, it reportedly targets 30,000 transactions per second with sub-second block times and combines EVM and WASM runtimes. The listing amplifies competition among Layer 1 projects for Korean retail liquidity, even as the sector braces for tighter anti-money laundering rules.
