Much critical ink has been spilled on the topic of ICOs since the method of crowdfunding began with Mastercoin in 2013. Opinions run the gamut of extremes as is so often the case in cryptocurrency and blockchain related matters. Are they a way of raising money that levels the playing field for highly-motivated visionaries who feel pinioned by the venture capital model? Or are they well-marketed pieces of vaporware designed to capitalize on a runaway train of hype and speculation?
Let’s see where the truth lies by taking a look at the three top performing ICOs of all time, by amount in dollars raised.
ICO #1 – Filecoin [Futures] (FIL)
$257,000,000 raised over August and September of 2017 at an initial token price of $5.
What it does:
The company behind Filecoin promises a system where storage is traded like a commodity on the blockchain. “Miners”, aka users with hard drive space to spare, can sell it on a marketplace in exchange for Filecoin. A reputation system rewards those who act in the community’s best interest, and clients can save money they normally would’ve had to expend on cloud services or more hardware.
How the project is doing as of writing:
Not great to highly suspect. The website claims Filecoin will be traded on major exchanges soon, but currently, this is not the case. The most recent white paper and roadmap are a year old. There is very little social media presence or community engagement, with the most recent “major” update simply a paper published on the Filecoin mining process. It’s difficult to imagine this level of irresponsibility anywhere else but in a nascent industry like blockchain. If a company received $250 million the old fashioned way and had this little to show for it, a hail of fury would be raining down upon it. This kind of behavior is more what you expect from a Kickstarter scam.
How the coin is faring as of writing:
Filecoin is currently traded on LBank. CoinMarketCap claims it’s also traded on Gate.io, but this may in fact be another token. Current value sits at $7.43.
ICO #2 – Tezos (XTZ)
$232,000,000 raised in July 2017 at an initial token price of $0.5.
What it does:
Tezos offers a self-regulating, self-governing blockchain concept using Proof of Stake (PoS). Stakeholders have the power to authorize or veto any changes to the network. This prevents a central authority or foundation from exerting their will upon the blockchain and forcing it to do something like a hard fork. Because it’s PoS, the biggest stakeholders will have the best chance to forge the next block, and perhaps the most say over the network’s direction. Like Ethereum, Tezos supports smart contracts.
How the project is doing as of writing:
Tezos is absent from all the major exchanges as the Tezos Foundation continues work behind the scenes. Just last month, the foundation handed over the blockchain to the public, putting to rest any doubts over whether the blockchain would ever live up to its decentralized promise. While only a few blocks have been mined, or “baked” in the Tezos parlance, by the public, it due time developers will be able to begin making decentralized applications (DAPPs), and token holders will finally have something to do. Glacial progress is better than no progress, and community morale is relatively strong.
How the coin is faring as of writing:
According to CoinMarketCap, Tezos is available on Gate.io, as well as HitBTC and GateCoin. Current value is $2.22.
ICO #3 – EOS (EOS)
$180,000,000 raised in June / July 2017 at an initial token price of $0.925.
What it does:
Like Ethereum (and Tezos), EOS is a smart contract platform for DAPPs. It was designed to solve one of the most significant problems facing blockchain technology: scalability. Its CEO claims it can add blocks at a rate undreamed of by Bitcoin or Ethereum by executing smart contracts and processing transactions in parallel. Skepticism greeted this claim at the ICO launch due to a conspicuous lack of technical documentation, but it’s funding was unaffected. EOS uses delegated PoS to elect representatives who validate and add the new blocks. While the representatives continuously change, this has raised fears of centralization, mostly from the Proof of Work (PoW) faithful.
How the project is doing as of writing:
The public blockchain launched in June of 2018 and there are consistent updates on social media, complete with technical documentation where necessary. Consistent, if incremental, progress is being made on the developer front, with a developer portal currently up and running. While the lofty expectations during the ICO should absolutely be tempered, EOS seems to have proven the grimmest naysayers wrong.
How the coin is faring as of writing:
EOS is available on a plethora of exchanges, with the most trading talking place on OKEx, Huobi, Bitfinex, and Binance. Current value hovers around $7.94.
We’ll take a look at the next three top-performing ICOs in the future, but for now the best we can say is that it’s a mixed-bag. It may sound pat, but it’s important to remember that the hype is as fast as the work is slow.