2017, or the year cryptocurrency went mainstream, started with a whimper. The crystal balls didn’t see it coming, neither did the star portend its glorious rise in their constellation. Bitcoin had lost close to 30% of its ATH and Ether was still struggling to establish its identity. Close to a thousand ICOs and over $5 billion in accumulated funding later, 2017 has become the year to beat, setting a high bar in the emerging Initial Coin Offering landscape.
2017 will be fondly remembered by the crypto community for all its FUDs, FOMO, bans, regulations, and Jimmy Dimons. The community will also not be forgetting all the hacks, phishing, scams, and hardforks. But most importantly, they wouldn’t forget all the numerous ‘moons’, ‘lambos’, and x100 investments that ICOs gave them.
There can be no price tag to the worth of saving the world but this is not necessarily the truth behind ICOs. Majority of ICOs are created from an inherent desire to address a centralized problem or further the cause of decentralization. From secure payment solutions to decentralized storage products, tokenized real world assets, entertainment, and even staking claims to asteroids, ICOs have literally offered everything and the kitchen sink and in doing so, changed the face of crowdfunding. Buoyed by the illustrious performance of last year’s superstars, ICOs are now challenging traditional Venture Capital space for start-up funding. These superstars are:
FILECOIN
A massive amount of storage sit unused in data centers and servers around the world. Filecoin is a decentralized solution that enables users monetize these data. Anyone can participate in the decentralized file storage network and earn filecoin for hosting files. File raised a quarter of one billion from it ICO sales. People seems to be intrigue by the concept of having someone host their digital files, thereby expanding their storage capabilities. The platform made $257 million.
TEZOS
Decentralized blockchain capable of self governance through a digital commonwealth. It was an uncapped sales and the funds kept flowing in until it reached a staggering $232million.
EOS
Ethereum’s direct competitor – ironically hosted on the same network for now – is set to improve scalability, Improve transaction fee and confirmation time, and also secure the integrity of smart contracts. The platform made $185million in just five days from it ingenious plans to outshine its host.
BANCOR
Based in Israel, Bancor addresses the problem with cryptocurrencies usage in the real world, liquidity. The platform aims to eliminate traditional cryptocurrency exchange platforms through the creation of a singular currency for the whole world, a currency comprising of other coins. The platform gather arrested the attention of the crypto community when Tim Draper invested into it, helping to propel its token sale event to
It is noteworthy that several platform rake in millions throughout 2017, such as Bitclave who sold out $25.5million in 32 seconds. 32 seconds is what it will take to carefully spell out the platform name, but in the crypto industry anything and everything is possible. The milky way does not have to spell it out.