Information as of July 2, 2018

This report was created by:

• • Professor Dmitrii Kornilov, Doctor of Economics, Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, and Leading Analyst at ICOBox;
  • Dima Zaitsev, PhD in Economics, Head of International Public Relations and Business Analytics Department Chief at ICOBox;
  • Nick Evdokimov, Co-Founder of ICOBox;
  • Mike Raitsyn, Vision Director of Snowfox Technology
  • Anar Babaev, Co-Founder of ICOBox;
  • Daria Generalova, Co-Founder of ICOBox

This report presents data on ICO market changes during 2018. Special emphasis has been placed on an analysis of the changes that took place in the second quarter of 2018.

1. General analysis of the ICO market (during the second quarter)

1.1. Brief overview of ICO market trends

The second quarter of 2018 was successful for ICOs. The total amount of funds collected exceeded $4.3 billion, and that is without counting the large EOS ICO that concluded on June 1, which was the unquestioned leader in funds collected. The Block.one project issued 900,000,000 EOS tokens. This blockchain project ultimately collected $4 billion, or 7.12 million ETH (The fundraising brought in 7.12 million in total ether as of Wednesday night, according to Token Report, a division of blockchain advisory firm New Alchemy). The distinguishing feature of this project is the lengthy period of performance of the ICO. The issue of tokens was performed over the course of a year, from June 26, 2017, to June 1, 2018. During its first five days the ICO sold 200,000,000 EOS tokens, with another 2,000,000 tokens subsequently being sold every 23 hours.

This project, which, like the two previous large projects TON and Petro, which were held in the first quarter of 2018, once again confirms the well-known Pareto Principle: 20% of efforts give 80% of results, and the other 80% of efforts give only 20% of results. The applicability of the principle to the performance of ICOs was considered in the article “ICO Success and Performance. The Pareto Principle [80/20 Rule].” The analysis discovered that the largest 345 ICOs accounted for $17.85 billion, or 90%, of all funds collected.

More than 600 ICOs were completed during the second quarter. The resource icodata.io alone shows 375 completed projects during April-June 2018. Another resource, icobench, shows more than 450 projects that are already scheduled to start after July 1, 2018.

There have been a variety of projects over the past quarter, for example:

• The project to create the stable cryptocurrency Basis collected $133 million.
• The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched a fake ICO, to teach investors to recognize the typical warning signs of fraudulent campaigns.
• During its ICO, the TaTaTu project, which plans to issue films on blockchain and is basically an entertainment video platform, managed to collect the surprisingly large amount of $575 million (June 20, 2018).
• The public token sale of the DCC project (a decentralized ecosystem for providers of financial services around the world. Solves the problem of providing loans using blockchain) ended in 20 minutes.
• The QuarkChain Demand for project tokens during the ICO exceeded supply by several times. The ICO’s Hard Cap was set at only $20 million. In the end, after the completion of the ICO the token price grew by 10x to 18x (the ICO was completed on June 3, 2018).
• Metronome’s token sale was set up like an auction with a falling price (June 18-25, 2018). The developers plan to develop a cryptocurrency capable of being exported and imported between various blockchains.
• and many others.

A important event in the financing of blockchain technology that took place in China must be noted. The total financing of Qulian Technology (Fun Chain Technology) from the Shanghai-based finance company Xinhu Zhongbao will exceed 1.5 billion yuan (around $226 million). After the financing is completed, Fun Chain Technology will become the first “quasi-unicorn” enterprise in the blockchain industry. Fun Chain Technology is the leading international blockchain team behind the Hyperchain project.

The popularity of ICOs is growing despite the announcements of several publications that there are many fraudulent projects. The Wall Street Journal published research according to which nearly 19% of all ICOs are questionable. In addition, in the opinion of Valerie Szczepanik, an official of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, a number of ICOs issuing new cryptocurrencies are in fact concealed offers of securities, and this could pose a threat to investors.

Table 1.1. Brief ICO market overview, key events and news for Q2 2018

Table 1.2 shows the development trends on the ICO market since 2017. Only popular and/or successfully completed ICOs (i.e. ICOs which managed to collect the minimum declared amount of funds) and/or ICOs listed on exchanges were considered.

Table 1.2. Aggregated trends and performance indicators of past (completed) ICOs^1,2,3,4

Note:
¹ Data source: tokendata.io, icodrops.com, icodata.io, coinschedule.com, cryptocompare.com, smithandcrown.com. For some ICOs information may currently be incomplete (for instance, the amount of funds collected). ICOs that collected less than $100,000 were not considered.
² Date when data was updated – July 2, 2018
³ Not including EOS, which collected $4 billion or 7.12 million ETH over the year from June 26, 2017, to June 1, 2018.
⁴ Including the TON Pre-ICO-1,2 ($1.7 billion) and the Petro ICO ($5 billion). According to the data from the official website of the Petro ICO, Petro sales equaled more than $5 billion, which is equivalent to more than $4 billion euros or $31 billion yuan (http://www.elpetro.gob.ve/#about). However, the data on the amount collected by El Petro from some other sources differ. For example, according to criptomoedasfacil.com, the amount of funds collected cannot exceed $2.3 billion taking into account discounts, the project White Paper indicates $4.387 billion, and other sources mention the $3 billion stated, among others, by the President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro.

The data for the previous period were adjusted to account for the appearance of more complete information on past ICOs. The amount of funds collected via ICOs during the past month (June) equaled $1.5 billion (not including EOS). This amount consists of the results of 79 successfully completed ICOs, with the largest amount of funds collected equaling $575 million (TaTaTu ICO). The average amount of funds collected per project equaled $19 million (see Tables 1.2, 1.3). Overall, more than 150 ICOs were completed last month, but information on the amount of funds collected is not available for all of them.

Table 1.3. Amount of funds collected and number of ICOs

* Data source: tokendata.io, icodrops.com, icodata.io, coinschedule.com, cryptocompare.com, smithandcrown.com.
Information on funds collected is not available for all ICOs (information for last week is tentative and may be adjusted). ICOs that collected less than $100,000 were not considered.
** More than 1,000 ICOs were performed in 2017. However, the data for the 514 largest and most popular ICOs, the data of which can be processed, were considered when calculating the total amount of funds collected during 2017.
*** Including the TON Pre-ICO-1,2 ($1.7 billion) and the Petro ICO ($5 billion). According to the data from the official website of the Petro ICO, Petro sales equaled more than $5 billion, which is equivalent to more than $4 billion euros or $31 billion yuan (http://www.elpetro.gob.ve/#about). However, the data on the amount collected by El Petro from some other sources differ. For example, according to criptomoedasfacil.com, the amount of funds collected cannot exceed $2.3 billion taking into account discounts, the project White Paper indicates $4.387 billion, and other sources mention the $3 billion stated, among others, by the President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro.
**** Not including EOS, which collected $4 billion or 7.12 million ETH over the year from June 26, 2017, to June 1, 2018.
***** The data for 2018 have been updated (date updated: July 1, 2018).

Table 1.3 shows that the largest amount of funds was collected via ICOs in March 2018, mainly due to the appearance of major ICOs. The highest average collected funds per ICO was also seen in March 2018.

In total, more than $15.8 billion were collected via ICOs in the first half of 2018 (and that is without the funds of EOS, an ICO that lasted for an entire year). This amount was collected by a total of only 564 projects.

Figure 1.1. Trends in funds collected and number of ICOs since the start of 2017

1.2 Top ICOs during Q2 2018

Table 1.4. Top 20 ICOs by the amount of funds collected during Q2 2018

* The category was established based on expert opinions.
** When compiling the lists of top ICOs, information from the websites tokendata.io, coinschedule.com and other specialized sources is used.

Table 1.4 shows the top 20 largest ICOs by funds collected, most of which belong to the categories Infrastructure, Events & Entertainment, Finance, and Commodities.

Figure 1.2. Top 20 ICOs by the amount of funds collected during Q2 2018

During the second quarter of 2018 more than $4.3 billion were collected (not including the largest ICO, EOS, which was completed on June 1). However, due to the overall fall in capitalization of the cryptocurrency market, a gradual adjustment in ICOs is being seen. This delayed reaction is leading to a steady fall in the hard cap requirements of projects, with the effectiveness of fund collection also beginning to drop. To be sure, the effectiveness of ICOs depends on many factors, including a growth in cryptocurrency market capitalization.

Annex – Glossary

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