Advances in the ICO 2017 Market: Interim Results

The world of blockade and crypto-currency, like the ICO market, is booming. In 2017, the crowdsails gained wide popularity both among start-ups, including those not directly related to the crypto-currency ecosystem, and among investors.

The number of token-calls launched in three quarters of this year has already exceeded 300 - this is more than one ICO per day. To date, a number of studies have been published on the ICO market, in particular Coindesk and Autonomous reports. Summarizing these reports, we can note the following:

In the first half of 2017, block projects attracted $ 797 million through ICO, while only $ 235 million through traditional venture capital investment. In the first three quarters of 2017, 201 the ICO project raised about $ 3 billion. The share of ICO that did not reach its goals, it increases: in June this was 7% of projects, in August 54%, in September 66%. There are more and more institutional investors participating in the market. There are already more than 100 of them.

When examining the successes of the ICO market, it is important to consider not only the total amount of fees and top projects, but also individual segments of the market. Some resources already offer statistics on the ICO market segments, but the criteria for assigning a project to a certain category have not been published. In addition, there is insufficient development of criteria to assess the success of various segments of the ICO market. In this article, as such additional criteria, it is proposed to use the number of the category and the average closing time of the ICO.

ForkLog Consulting specialists examined a sample of 148 projects, which were divided into 24 categories depending on the scope of the project. In total, these projects raised $ 2.379 billion, or about 80% of all funds collected during 9 months of 2017, which makes the sample fairly representative.

The most numerous category was "Finance"

In this category, 32 projects (22% of the sample) are involved, accounting for 25% of the collected funds (about $ 523 million). It includes wallets, exchange services, asset management, trading platforms, lending platforms, payment systems. The same category is the leader in the share of ninja-ICO (projects that have the same day of opening and closing of the same): one third of all ninjas from the sample (18 projects) fell into this category, and in the category itself, approximately every fifth project became a ninja. The most successful category project is Finance - Bancor ($ 159 million, one third of all category fees).

In terms of the amount collected, the category "Infrastructure"

19 projects of this category (13% of the sample) collected 27.6% (about $ 630 million). It includes platforms for working with smart contracts and decentralized applications, interblockin solutions, projects on cybersecurity and a number of other infrastructure projects. The most successful in this category were the Tezos projects (about $ 219 million) and EOS ($ 185 million). Together, these two projects accounted for 64% of the funds collected by all 19 projects of the "Infrastructure" category. Despite this distortion, the category is leading by an average fee of $ 33 million. Second place in the average amount of the collection is the category "Commerce & Advertising" (11 projects), which includes projects related to advertising, as well as sites for trade in real and virtual goods. The average fee in the category "Commerce & Advertising" is almost $ 19 million.

Top 5 categories by the amount of collected funds:

1. Infrastructure $629 735 885
2. Finance $522 850 138
3. Decentralized storage $287 000 000
4. Commerce & Advertising $206 166 095
5. Communications $164 901 179

The fastest of all closed the ICO category "Investments"

In addition to the number of projects in each category and the amount of funds raised the success of projects is characterized by the actual duration of ICO - the time at which the project was able to collect enough money to announce the closure of the ICO. In this nomination, won the category "Investments" (13 projects), which includes venture capital funds, accelerators, as well as other projects that offer investing in various blokcheyn projects, mining and real assets. In this category, the average ICO closing time was 20 days. At the same time, the share of ninjas in this category was only 7.7%, while in the categories "Finance" and "Commerce & Advertising" they were 18% each. If you exclude the ninja from the sample, then the category "Investments" wins with an average closing time of 22 days. In second place is the category "Commerce & Advertising", in which the ICO closed on average for 21 days, and without taking into account the ninja - for 26 days.

The most unpopular market segments of the ICO 2017

It is important to take into account not only successful projects, but also failures. For this, categories were considered that included projects that collected the least amount of funds, as well as categories with the longest average closure. It turned out that the least numerous category, where only one project, it is "Insurance" (InsureX), "Education" (Lunyr), "Recruitment" (CoinJob), "Charity" (TribeToken). In this case, insurance and education relatively successful, they collected $ 18.5 million and $ 3.3 million respectively, but the recruitment and charity was not only the most numerous but the most unsuccessful and categories: they have received only $ 23.5 thousand and $ 1.8 thousand respectively. Note that at the moment there are five projects of the category "Recruitment", which in the future can raise the success of this category.

The category with the longest average closure was "Currency". This category includes projects that offer new altcoyins. On average, projects of the category "Currency" were closed for 44 days. It is important to note that a longer closing time does not necessarily mean less attractiveness of the project. This may be due to various factors that require a separate study.

Subtotals

So, the most significant categories in the ICO market for the three quarters of 2017 were:

The most numerous category is "Finance" (32 projects, 22% of the sample).
The highest share of ninja: "Finance" (18.75% in the category and a third of all ninjas in the market).
The most successful category for the collected funds: "Infrastructure" ($ 630 million, 27.6% of collected funds).
The highest average amount collected: "Infrastructure" ($ 33 ​​million).
The highest average closing rate: "Investments" (20 days and 22 days without taking into account the ninja).

At the same time, three categories - the ninja share, the average amount of fees and the average closing rate - ranked second in the category "Commerce & Advertising".

In conclusion, let's compare the results with the top-5 ICO-projects by the amount of fees:

1. Filecoin (Decentralized storage) $ 257 000 000 89.5%
2. Tezos (Infrastructure) $ 218 820 000 64%
3. EOS (Infrastructure) $ 185 000 000 64%
4. Bancor (Finance) $ 159 000 000 30.5%
5. Status (Communications) $ 107 660 000 92%

Such small categories as Decentralized storage and Communications (2 and 4 projects respectively) fell into the TOP-5 fund-raising categories and gained significance only because of the Filecoin and Status projects, which account for nine-tenths of all fees in these categories. In contrast, the category "Finance" looks even more significant, since the Bancor project accounts for only a third of all the funds raised by this category.

And in this there is nothing surprising - Fintech he is finteh.