By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 18th, 2024
Here is a look into how the ICO market performed in 2017, with some of the best ICOs of the year.
2017 has been one of the most historic years when speaking about cryptocurrencies’ growth, which provided a launchpad for this decentralized form of digital transactions to enter the mainstream. Also, the decentralized blockchain technology infrastructure, which backs cryptocurrency, has received a lot of attention across industries because of its real potential to revolutionize the technological world.
The startup industry has benefited hugely due to the blockchain technology, as it empowered new businesses to pitch their creative idea directly to the people and raise funds without undergoing the hassle of legal procedures and formalities. Through famously known Initial Coin Offering (ICOs), investors would get the company’s newly issued digital tokens in exchange for Bitcoin, Ethereum or other fiat currencies. As per definition, an ICO is “a form of collective support of innovative technological projects, a type of presale and attracting of new backers through initial coin offerings to future holders in the form of blockchain-based cryptocurrencies (tokens) and digital assets.”
2017 was indeed a great year for ICOs as the total collection surpassed over $6 billion in valuations. Some of them outperformed by receiving huge investor funding. The report provided by ICO Box lists some of the best ICOs of 2017 across different categories of businesses with infrastructure dominating the list.
Table 1. Top 10 ICOs in Terms of the Amount of Funds Collected in 2017
| Name | Category** | Collected, $ million | % | Completed | |
| 1 | Hdac | Infrastructure* | 258 | 15% | December 2017 |
| 2 | Filecoin | Data Storage | 257 | 15% | September 2017 |
| 3 | Tezos | Infrastructure | 232.32 | 13% | July 2017 |
| 4 | EOS Stage 1 | Infrastructure | 230 | 13% | June 2017 |
| 5 | Sirin Labs | Infrastructure* | 157.9 | 9% | December 2017 |
| 6 | Bancor | Infrastructure | 153 | 9% | June 2017 |
| 7 | Polkadot | Infrastructure* | 144.3 | 8% | October 2017 |
| 8 | QASH | Trading & Investing* | 108.2 | 6% | November 2017 |
| 9 | Status | Infrastructure | 107.6 | 6% | June 2017 |
| 10 | Comsa | Trading & Investing* | 95.6 | 5% | December 2017 |
| Total for top 10 | 1743.92 | 100% |
* The category was established based on expert opinions.
** When compiling the lists of top ICOs, information from the websites tokendata.io, icodrops.com, coinschedule.com and other specialized sources are used. The ICO project categories correspond to the information from the website coinschedule.com. If there is no information on the website concerning the project category at the time of compilation of this analytical report, the category is determined by experts.
The above table shows the best performing ICOs of 2017 and their contribution to the market. As we can see, the contribution made by the top ten ICOs exceeds $1.7 billion. Let us have a brief look over what each of these businesses has to offer in terms of products and services.
Hdac (White Paper) – Backed by Hyundai this blockchain-based platform allows IoT devices to communicate with each other and execute tasks like authentication, data storage, payments etc. Hdac will create a new blockchain based on multichain, such that it can handle contract and scale functionality required by IoT platform. It will also develop interoperability between blockchains in order to facilitate payments through Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Filecoin (White Paper) – Filecoin has been one of the most popular ICOs of 2017. Filecoin is a decentralized storage network that turns cloud storage into an algorithmic market. The market runs on a blockchain with a native protocol token (also called “Filecoin”), which miners earn by providing storage to clients. Conversely, clients spend Filecoin hiring miners to store or distribute data.
Tezos (White Paper) – Tezos is a new decentralized blockchain that governs itself by establishing a true digital commonwealth. It facilitates formal verification, a technique which mathematically proves the correctness of the code governing transactions and boosts the security of the most sensitive or financially weighted smart contracts.
EOS Stage 1 (White Paper) – EOS.IO is software that introduces a blockchain architecture designed to enable vertical and horizontal scaling of decentralized applications (the “EOS.IO Software”). This is achieved through an operating system-like construct upon which applications can be built. The software provides accounts, authentication, databases, asynchronous communication and the scheduling of applications across multiple CPU cores and/or clusters. The resulting technology is a blockchain architecture that has the potential to scale to millions of transactions per second, eliminates user fees and allows for quick and easy deployment of decentralized applications.
Sirin Labs (White paper) – Sirin Labs is a producer of high quality consumer electronics products, key characteristic of which is prioritization of security and compatibility within the crypto-economy. The SRN token has various use cases within the Sirin Labs’ ecosystem which gives it a significant value. The company’s vision is to become the world’s leader in secure open source consumer electronics, and bridge the gap between the mass market and the blockchain tech.
Bancor (White Paper) – Bancor Protocol is a standard for the creation of Smart Tokens, cryptocurrencies with built-in convertibility directly through their smart contracts.
Polkadot (White Paper) – Polkadot is a blockchain technology, a heterogeneous multi-chain. It consists of many parachains with potentially differing characteristics, which can make it easier to achieve anonymity or formal verification. Transactions can be spread across the chains, allowing many more to be processed in the same period of time. Polkadot ensures that each of these blockchains remains secure and that any dealings between them are faithfully executed. Specialized parachains called “bridges” can be created to link independent chains.
QASH (White Paper) – QUOINE LIQUID PLATFORM is a single globally-sourced trading platform (World Book) with an associated suite of services (Prime Brokerage). Combined, these produce the highest level of liquidity in the world—allowing any individual to access the opportunities and wealth the new Crypto economy offers.
Status (White Paper) – Status is an open source messaging platform and mobile interface to interact with decentralized applications that run on the Ethereum Network. With Status your mobile device becomes a light client node on the Ethereum Network, enabling you to access Ethereum’s entire ecosystem from anywhere.
Comsa (White Paper) – Comsa is a conduit for future ICOs that want to exist in the COMSA ecosystem. As part of the project, a COMSA team is now already in place to provide companies with consultation, expertise and solutions to support their very own ICOs and implement blockchain technology into their business practices using our Zaif exchange and mijin private blockchain software, all at the same time, as a one-stop solution.
The data since the start of 2017 were adjusted to account for the appearance of more complete information on past ICOs. In all, the total amount of funds collected during 2017 equaled to more than $6 billion (the funds collected through 382 ICOs were taken into account). During the Q4 of 2017, the amount of funds collected via ICOs exceeded $3.1 billion. This amount includes the results of the 196 most successful completed ICOs, with the largest amount collected equaling approximately $258 million (Hdac ICO). The average amount of funds collected per project makes $16 million.