10 Greatest Projects from the ICO Era Whatever Happened?

Three of the 10 largest projects launched during the initial coin offering (ICO) era are now inactive or dead, and most of the rest are struggling to find relevance.

An examination of the biggest winners during ICO mania shows that collecting millions does not solve all your problems and sometimes makes things worse.

EOS

In the year At the height of the ICO era in 2017, Brendan Bloomer and Dan Larimer presented a new ultra-fast blockchain – EOS – that offers vertical and horizontal scaling of decentralized applications.

Block.one, the company that manages EOS, completed a one-year ICO in 2018, which raised an astonishing $4.2 billion. To date, it remains the largest token sale to date.

Block.one and EOS are not going to take the crypto world by storm as predicted. Instead, the corporation was sidetracked by projects unrelated to its core mission. A centralized exchange called Bullish launched and $180 million in capital went into a social media platform called Voice.

Perhaps the luxury of Bloc.one's billions has distracted them. In the year In 2021, the EOS community created the EOS Network Foundation to support the development of the project independently of Block.one.

In May 2024, the EOS Network Foundation announced a new token model, eliminating inflationary Tokenomics and introducing a fixed supply model with a maximum supply of 2.1 billion tokens.

EOS (EOS) has a market capitalization of $770 million and was trading at $0.52 at the time of writing on August 23, a 97.7% drop from its April 2018 high of $22.71.

Status: Active.

Telegram open network

Russian brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov had grand plans for the Telegram Open Network (TON). If realized, the network and its native TonCoin (TON) would support messaging, file sharing, and a layer of network anonymity.

While the United States Securities and Exchange Commission has seen fit to allow other blockchain projects to continue after paying fines, it was far less forgiving in Ton's case.

After raising $1.7 billion, the SEC banned Ton from launching the token and ordered Telegram to refund investors. He also issued an $18.5 million fine for good measure.

The Durov brothers did not give up easily. They went on to create “The Open Network” and launch it with many of the same functions and features as originally envisioned for the Telegram Open Network.

Later, Toncoin became independent of Telegram by developers who did not follow Telegram's guidelines.

Status: Reborn and Active.

These

At first, Tezos seemed destined for great things. Led by an American husband-and-wife team of Arthur and Kathleen Brittman, Tezos presented a new and compelling narrative that captured the imagination of crypto investors.

The idea? To create a “self-improving” cryptocurrency that allows stakeholders to influence the future direction of the Tezos blockchain. In theory, this would allow Tezos to do anything its users want. Whenever disagreements arise, a democratic vote resolves the issue and kills hard forks.

In the year In July 2017, Tezos broke crowdfunding records when its token sale raised $232 million in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH). Expectations were high on all sides, but the problems were just beginning.

Shortly after the addition, the Britmans and Tezos Foundation President Johan Gevers divorced.

Amid the conflict of C-level executives, progress stalls on the ground of a “democratic” blockchain. Gevers was forced to resign from the Tezos Foundation in February 2018, but by then had lost critical momentum and community goodwill.

To avoid the Tezos disaster, the SEC soon called for unregistered security sales. A class-action lawsuit then followed.

With court cases, dramas, public struggles and hopeless delays, Tezos fell from public consciousness. But the project continues.

Today, the market cap of Tezos (XTZ) is $698 million. The token price is $0.70, down 92% from its all-time high of $9.12 in October 2021.

In June 2024, the company released its updated roadmap, “Tezos X”, hoping for faster blockchains and “smart rolls”.

Status: Active.

Filecoin

Filecoin is a decentralized storage project that raised $233 million in 2017. The project has long since passed, but the project continues to work by providing file hosting services as advertised.

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Decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs) like Filecoin are one of the hot narrative trends in 2024. FileCoin (FIL) price rose to $11.46 in March, but failed to sustain this high.

FIL's current market cap is $2.2 billion, and the token's price is $3.90, down from its April 2021 high of $236.84.

Status: Active.

Dragon coin

In the year In 2018, Dragon Inc. He created Dragon Coin (DRG), a gambling token and payment system for the Asian online casino market. Ironically, he had plans to build a “Chinese Cultural City” in Cambodia.

The ICO was a huge success, raising $320 million. A month later, the project moved from the 14K in Macau. Wan was previously sentenced to 13 years in prison for illegal gambling, loan sharking and criminal association.

Dragon Coin's connection to the Thai film industry emerged when emerging actor Jiratpsit Jaravijit, nicknamed “Boom”, was arrested after funds from the ICO were found in his bank account.

Jiratpisit may have believed that he was on the fast track to easy money, but this particular ICO project blew up in everyone's face.

Status: Dead.

HDAC

In December 2017, Hyundai Digital Asset Company, part of the Korean automaker, announced that it had entered the blockchain space with a $258 million ICO.

HDAC had big plans for enterprise blockchain, Internet of Things and automotive manufacturing lines. It also connects blockchains and supports e-sports games.

It looks like the project is still running in 2020, but updates stopped sometime after that, and the track slowed down. While other projects from the ICO crashed and burned, HDAC simply faded away.

Status: Missing in action, presumed dead.

Sirin Labs

In the year December 2017 was a busy time for ICOs, and Swiss-Israeli Sirin Labs completed a $157.9 million fundraising that month.

Sirin Labs unveiled their latest model, The Finney, less than a year after they set out to create an affordable blockchain phone.

Named after blockchain pioneer and Satoshi candidate Hal Finney, Finney was launched in November 2018 for $1,000.

While the Finney isn't cheap, it was a better value than the Solarin, an earlier pre-ICO phone model from Siren Labs, which was priced at an eye-watering $16,000.

Siren Labs may have had an interesting concept and a working product to bring to market, but ultimately Finney failed to gain traction in the highly competitive mobile phone sector.

Status: Dead.

Banking

In June 2017, Bancor raised $153 million, making it one of the largest and most successful ICOs ever.

The company is still active today, and its flagship project is Carbon, a decentralized onchain transaction exchange.

In the year On July 8, 2019, Bancor banned US customers from its platform, citing a lack of transparency from regulators. In the year That decision seemed prudent after a U.S. judge in February 2021 dismissed the suit against Bancor for lack of personal jurisdiction.

Bancor's (BNT) market cap is $63 million and is trading at $0.50 as of press time, down 95% from its January 2018 peak of $10.72.

Status: Active.

Banker

Bankera, an alternative to traditional banking, completed its ICO funding in February 2018. The payment provider raised a whopping $153 million.

Bankera (BNK) was initially launched with the ERC-223 token standard, but this decision did not work as expected. In the year In February 2022, the company announced that it will launch a new Bankera token based on the more globally accepted ERC-20 standard.

Sometimes it doesn't pay to be a pioneer. Etterscan shows that BNK currently has a market cap of just $700,000. The BNK token trades at $0.07.

Status: About Active.

Polkadot

Polkadot, a project founded by Gavin Wood, who is also one of the founders of Ethereum, tops the list.

In October 2017, Polkadot's ICO raised $145 million, promising to bring horizontal scale to the industry through parachain technology. Polkadot acts as the base layer upon which other blockchains, known as parachains, are built.

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In May 2024, Messari reports that Polkadot's daily active addresses reached an all-time high of 514,000, up 48% quarter-on-quarter and 192% over the previous six months.

The Takeaway: Unlike many of its ICO peers, Polkadot continues to grow.

Polkadot (DOT) is currently trading at $4.65, down 91.5% from its November 2021 high of $54.98. The market cap is $6.5 billion.

Status: Active.