Crowdfunding & Initial Coin Offerings
Initial Coin Offerings can be considered as an alternative form of crowdfunding that has emerged outside of the traditional financial system. This model has helped a lot of successful projects and companies get the funding required to start their business. In 2013, over US$5.1 billion were raised via crowdfunding worldwide, which increased to US$16 billion in 2014 and was estimated at over US$34 billion in 2015.
Initial Coin Offerings, also known as ICOs is the cryptocurrency version of crowdfunding and are a part of the crypto world that is most likely here to stay. It's one of the easiest and most efficient methods for companies and individuals to fund their projects and for regular users to invest in projects they see value in. An Initial Coin Offering is an event that usually extends over a period of one week or more and in which everyone is allowed to purchase newly issued tokens in exchange for established cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) or Ether (ETH).
In an ICO, there can be a specific goal or limit for project funding, meaning that every token will have a pre-designated price that will not change during the Initial Coin Offering period, which also means that the token supply is static.
It is also possible to have a static supply with a dynamic funding goal, in which the distribution of tokens will be made according to the funds received, meaning that the more funds the project receives the higher the token price will be.
You can also have a dynamic token supply that will be determined by a number of funds that are received, meaning that the price for each token is static (e.g 1 ETH – 1 token) but every time one Ether is sent a new token is created. A limit can be set in terms of goals or time frame.
ICO List
Analyzing examples of relevant ICOs, one can piece together what are the main characteristics or factors for a successful ICO, both in fund gathering and in post-ICO valuation.
Nxt ICO
Nxt is a complete economic system platform that allows users to issue assets and cryptocurrencies that can be exchanged in a decentralized manner through the Nxt exchange. Users can also add plugins and access the Nxt Platform through APIs. The NXT ICO started on the 28th of September 2013 and it lasted until 18 November 2013 with 21 Bitcoin collected, worth roughly $14k. The ICO was held in an "unofficial" way, through an anonymous bitcoin talk forum account, with funds being sent to the funder's personal Bitcoin address with a special message attached. The genesis block revealed that only 73 people participated in the ICO which makes for a poor distribution, one of the biggest setbacks in early adoption and distribution.
ICO Period: 28 September 2013 - 18 November 2013
Funds gathered (BTC): 21 BTC
Tokens distributed: 1,000,000,000 NXT
Profit percentage (In BTC): 199900%
Ethereum ICO
Ethereum is a smart contract and decentralized applications platform that has gained a lot of traction over time. Ethereum's native value token, Ether, is mined through a Proof of Work protocol that is set to change to Proof of Stake. The Ethereum ICO was held from the 20th of July, 2014 to the 2nd of September, 2014 (42 days). 31.5k BTC ($18.4 million at the time) were collected during the Initial Coin Offering period making it the second most successful ICO held and the 6th highest funded crowdfunding project so far. The fact that the development team held the funds in BTC lead to it losing a big portion of its funding due to volatility. Ethereum has risen x% in value since it's released and several projects have been and are being built on the Ethereum Virtual Machine, like DigixDAO, Ardor, Singular-DTV, and Iconomi.
ICO Period: 20 July 2014 - 2 September 2014
Funds gathered (USD): $18,439,086
Funds gathered (BTC): 31,529.49
Tokens distributed: 60,000,000
Profit percentage (In BTC): 3900%
Lisk ICO
Lisk is a modular Smart Contract and Dapp platform that aims to make their deployment accessible to all developers by allowing them to be coded in Javascript, one of the most popular programming languages. The Lisk cryptocurrency uses a Delegated Proof of Stake (dPoS) consensus mechanism. The Lisk ICO was held from the 22 of February until the 21st of March, 2016. During this period users were allowed to send Bitcoin, Crypty and any other cryptocurrency supported by the ShapeShift automatic exchange.