Watch out Two Ethereum-Based ICOs to Be Launched This Week

After the “very confusing” remark that trailed the way CoinMarketCap and Bitfinex presented the ICO of IOTA, which seems to be aiming for the micropayment purpose in a growing sharing economy, two Ethereum-based platforms are set to launch their crowdsale this week.

So far, the Status and Civic projects’ planned ICOs seem to be looking good. Though Vinny Lingham’s Civic has already issued $33 mln worth of its token (CVC) eight days before its June 21 official offering schedule, Status is hitting the market for the first time.

Civic’s ICO allows smaller buyers to buy up to 110 mln of the 330 mln allocated tokens ($0.10 each) - as the bigger buyers are only guaranteed up to 66 percent of the purchase order they have requested.

On the other hand, Status’ open source messaging form-factor is aimed at making Ethereum feel more familiar to the average smartphone user, providing a flexible platform for DApp developers. This is all in a bid to “maximise the amount of daily use of Ethereum’s public blockchain,” its white paper says.

It is one of several new projects that are being developed on the Ethereum platform, presumably with the potential to make it reach the mass market sooner than most users could ever imagine.

While IOTA is focused on serving as the backbone of the Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Civic is building an identity network which will connect companies and users, Status’ creation of a Users-as-Stakeholders network aims to address the problem of social bots and media manipulation. It is an idea focused towards the next generation of social networking, giving it great reach and easier signups considering its social media approach.

Smartphone use a boost

These projects are likely to do well in the market considering, particularly, their propensity to benefit hugely from the expected increase in the number of global smartphone users in the coming years.

According to ARK Invest’s "Big Ideas," which represents the research and investment company’s annual breakout of technologies that it believes will accelerate significantly in the months ahead, 75 percent of the world population will own a smartphone by 2020.

With smartphones becoming the new personal computer and the access point to the digital world for citizens of both developing and developed nations alike, Status states that it is banking on several of its related features to grow its market. This includes messengers now boasting more users than web 2.0 social networks, having the highest retention rates and its users now spending an increasing amount of their time on social networks.

Coupled with Ethereum’s growth, the project promises great ROI opportunities for investors.