The Initial Currency Offers (ICOs) were among the most familiar and read terms in the cryptocurrencies ecosystem during 2017. With a total revenue of more than $3.7 billion, this burgeoning capital raising scheme has left a number of interesting facts to look at.

A good part of the statistics and data below are the result of a study carried out by a team dedicated to the marketing of ICO projects. It consulted 2,125 portals and said that it had applied more than 1,000 hours of work to provide this report.

According to the study, each of the ICOs lasted approximately 24 days and the average collection was around $14.7 million. On the other hand, the tokens released through this financing scheme had an average price of $1.13 each.

Ethereum's blockchain was chosen by 86.75% of the organised ICOs and 4.82% of these used Waves' blockchain, while the rest used NEM, Counterparty or others. The statistics only confirm Ethereum's dominance, where the ERC-20 protocol for creating tokens has allowed the proliferation of these instruments. Currently there are 20,581 different cryptoactives based on this recognized blockchain.

On average, each human team after an ICO consisted of 8 people, generally knowledgeable about blockchain technology and with expertise in the world of cryptoactives, as well as publicists and campaign managers in social networks. Trade, infrastructure and finance were the main areas of focus.

The presence in the networks of these fundraising instruments has been important. On Facebook, a number of 11,183 users have been involved with a project of this nature, but on Twitter the figure exceeds 17,000. In Reddit, one of the most important networks in terms of ecosystem issues, up to 1,732 users have talked about ICOs.

As for the destination of the collected funds, 44% of these were dedicated to project development; 17% to marketing expenses and 11% to legal matters. In addition, 28 per cent of resources were allocated to other costs such as infrastructure, internal economics of platforms, operational costs, etc.

According to information provided by a specialized portal, the most successful ICO was Filecoin, with a total of $257 million dollars collected, followed by Tezos with $222 million and Paragon with $183 million.

It is noteworthy that Tezos, after having been one of the most successful ICOs in 2017, is now in a delicate legal situation that has affected the development of its project and each of the people involved in it: from its CEO, to its investors, who still do not know if they will have a refund of the money invested.

By considering facts such as the recently mentioned case of Tezos and taking into account the legal battles waged by different governments around the world to regulate or prohibit ICOs, the flip side of this brilliant fund-raising strategy is shown. Although they are a very powerful instrument, capable of enabling a startup to be financed in a "fast and simple" way compared to traditional methods, they also have a dark side in which both its team of promoters and the people who invest in them can be more adversely affected than benefited if they are not carried out in a responsible and competent way.