China-based FCoin— a controversial cryptocurrency exchange known for its innovative “Trans-Fee Mining” incentive program—has recently been back in the spotlight with the “sustainable mining” initiative after nearly 6-month dormancy.

According to the statement released by FCoin exchange on March 18, it has started to implement the sustainable mining and income distribution adjustment. The sustainable mining refers to  the relatively stable mining output of FCoin’s native token FT through the control and adjustment of daily return and the mining is said to last at least 3 years.

The statement also states that all FT tokens returned by the sustainable mining will be locked for 1 year and automatically unlocked after 1 year. These tokens will enjoy all community interests such as dividends and voting during the lockout period. These tokens returned by the sustainable mining are from the FCoin Fund.

Following the news, FCoin leapt into the top six crypto exchanges in terms of 24-hour trading volume for the first time since last September, totaling $6.54, according to data from Fei Xiao Hao, the biggest cryptocurrency information site in China. As the exchange has long been accused of wash trading, the sudden rise in the trading volume is likely to be attributable to fake transactions.

Besides, the price of FT token rose to $ 0.05482 on March 18, up more that 120% over the past month.

However, the newly-launched sustainable mining model draws criticism. Some crypto commenters state that the new rules are more favorable for new investors than for veteran users as users can only obtain 20% of daily distributable revenue, and the remaining 80% will be distributed on a yearly basis.

Launched in May 2018 by Zhang Jian, the former chief technology officer of Huobi, FCoin touts a new revenue model known as “Trans-Fee Mining”, which sees it turn crypto trading into mining, as the platform rewards users with its own FT token. Shortly after the launch, FCoin drew fire, meeting with harsh criticism of bot trading and price manipulation, and it was even labeled as a “Ponzi Scheme” by investors.

After nearly half a year of reflection and adjustment, FCoin intends to take advantage of the sustainable mining to reshape its image and attract more users. Further, as the initial exchange offering(IEO), a new approach to token sales, is starting to gain popularity, some community members recommended the exchange to follow Binance, launching an IEO platform to drive up the price of FT which is only traded on the FCoin . But FCoin has a long way to go before rising to become a well-known and trustworthy crypto trading platform.