Years ago, between 2016-2018, investors poured $22 billion into ICOs and IPOs.

What do these projects look like in three years?

Three years ago, investors flooded the crypto market with their money after Bitcoin surged to new heights, with investors putting up more than $22 billion in initial coin offerings (ICOs).

“ICO” is a new method of raising funds using cryptocurrencies, which was popularized and published by Ethereum in 2016.

During 2017 and 2018, ICOs enabled hundreds of projects to raise much-needed funds for entrepreneurs and developers, on their promises to build the infrastructure for a new, decentralized digital future, to store data at scale, achieve equity in revenue distribution, encourage creativity, and protect artists’ production as well. To complex and new financial products…

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But in the end, many of these projects failed to live up to the required standard and many of these projects conflicted with the regulations of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) after violating laws and conducting unregistered securities sales.

However, not all projects that relied on the initial public offering (ICO) have failed to fulfill their promises. Rather, there are those who strive and work hard to achieve the promises made and go a long way to achieve this.

Here are the 10 biggest ICOs in the crypto market.

Ranking from smallest to largest in terms of amount of funds raised by ICO:

10- DAO:

The DAO project is one of the original examples of a decentralized autonomous organization. The project provides open source code and provides some form of governance mechanism in place of traditional leadership.

The project is designed to serve as a platform for funding crypto projects, with funds automatically awarded to project owners based on specific criteria.

In May 2017, DAO developers launched one of the first ICOs, raising 12.7 million Ethereum, worth about $150 million at the time.

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But the project was abandoned after a hacker stole about $50 million in funds.

The Ethereum community voted for the network fork to reverse the hack, return ETH to investors and close the DAO.

The decision was controversial, as it violated the immutability of the blockchain and broke the saying “code is the law.”

9- Bancor:

In June 2017, Zug, Switzerland-based Bancor raised $153 million in just three hours, from investors including popular investor Tim Draper and Blockchain Capital.

Just two years later, the project’s cryptocurrency “BNT” plummeted, after hackers stole $13.5 million worth of cryptocurrency from Bancor’s decentralized platform “DEX” in 2018, and then in 2019, the platform was forced to ban users residing in United States due to regulatory uncertainty.

That same year, an anonymous source told Coindesk that while Bancor has fulfilled the lion’s share of its ICO promises, the bulk of its ICO funds are now being invested elsewhere.

In recent months, the volume of trading on decentralized exchanges (DEX) and the popularity of decentralized finance (DeFi) has soared, but BNT hasn’t bounced back from its 2018 streak.

8- Serene coefficient:

Switzerland-based Sirin Labs raised $158 million in December 2017.

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Sirin Labs introduced the world’s first blockchain phone.

The phone is called “Finney”, which includes a built-in cryptocurrency wallet, supports the digital currency “SRC”, and also allows the operation of purchases through dapps using this currency.

Sirin kept its promise, and Finney was launched one year later, but failed to take off and perfect marketing.

In April 2019, the startup laid off 25% of its workforce.

After that, Sirin CEO Moshe Hogeg faced a series of lawsuits related to his other business ventures and an unpaid $6 million factory bill to manufacture phones.

Today, the price of the digital currency SRN has almost collapsed.

The price of the cryptocurrency dropped from a peak of $3.51 in January 2018 to $0.018.

Meanwhile, HTC and Samsung launched mobile phones compatible with cryptocurrency.

7- Tezos:

Switzerland-based Tezos raised $232 million through an initial coin offering (ICO) it conducted in July 2017.

The platform announced that it aims to offer a smart contract platform designed to support online digital economies.

What is distinctive about the “Tezos” blockchain project is the ability to update and support large divisions without giving up the old blockchain in favor of the new, but rather it has a “self-modifying” feature.

A class-action lawsuit has been filed by investors against Tezos, claiming that the project violated securities laws.

Tezos was then penalized and settled in September last year, with Tezos agreeing to pay $25 million in compensation to investors.

Today, “Tezos” is one of the success stories of projects that started with “ICO”.

The news has surfaced that the digital euro is likely to be built on the “Tezos” blockchain.

The price of the digital currency XTZ reached an all-time high of $4.39 in August 2020.

6- Philiquin:

Protocol Labs, the company behind the Filecoin project, raised $257 million in September 2017 via an initial coin offering (ICO), with the promise of building a decentralized market for data storage like Airbnb in the world of hotels and shared accommodation.

The long-awaited project suffered from delays but was finally launched in October 2020.

The digital currency “FIL” started trading at 63 dollars, but then the price of the coin fell to 31 dollars.

This means that the value of the coin is 14 times more than it was earlier than it was presented in the form of an ICO.

The digital currency FIL was listed on several major exchanges immediately upon its official launch.

CEO Juan Bennett reported in November 2020 that there is more than an exabyte of storage.

5- HDAC:

In December 2017, Hyundai Digital Asset, a subsidiary of the Korean automaker Hyundai, launched the fifth largest ICO in exchange for its HDAC cryptocurrency.

This initial public offering raised $258 million from investors.

HDAC was designed as an ecosystem to be used with the Internet of Things and other blockchain networks, but it has so far failed to gain traction.

Now the price of the digital currency “HDAC” is about $ 0.161 and the coin reached its peak in June 2018.

In March 2020, HDAC launched the first dapp on its mainnet.

The project has plans to launch an ecosystem of partners to rival the likes of Klatyn, the blockchain platform consortium backed by the owner of the Korean messaging app Kakao.

4- Dragon:

At the height of the ICO boom in March 2018, Dragon Inc., based in Macau in southern China, launched an initial offer of its digital currency called DRG, a payments system targeting the online casino market in Southeast Asia.

It appears that individual and institutional investors alike have seized the opportunity to invest in what was primarily gambling-oriented, providing more than $320 million in project currency.

The following month, the New York Times alleged that Cambridge Analytica, a controversial political consulting firm that has been involved in influencing hundreds of elections globally, was behind the Dragon coin promotion.

The New York Times article also linked Dragon with Wan Kuok-koi, a notorious gangster in Macau.

The project owners denied the allegations.

After alerting the concerned investors, the Anti-Crime Division of Thailand (CSD) launched an investigation, and arrested a famous Thai actor, as some ICO funds were traced to his bank account.

Police investigations found that the money was used to buy land and some of it was spent.

Two years later, in March 2020, project founders Paul Moynan and Chris Ahmed forked out.

The value of the digital currency DRG was estimated at about $2.34, but it is now estimated at only $0.04.

3- tattooed

The Tatatu project raised $575 million from backers and investors including Polymath Capital and BlockTower Capital in June 2018.

The project marketed itself as a blockchain-based “Netflix,” where viewers are rewarded with TTU digital currency for watching on the platform.

The project has collaborated with Hollywood actor Johnny Depp, and the project is still struggling to include popular movies on its platform, a social media platform that rewards users when their visual content is liked or shared.

The cryptocurrency TTU was valued at $0.25, but later decreased in value to $0.01.

2- Tons:

Pavel and Nikolai Durov, the Russian-born brothers behind Telegram, raised a whopping $1.7 billion in two ICOs, one in March and the other in October 2018.

The project promised to provide blockchain-based financial payments.

But development on the project was halted after a lawsuit was filed against it from the “SEC” body.

In May 2020, Pavel Durov announced that the team had struggled hard to find a solution, but that TON would never be released.

The following month, the US Securities and Exchange Commission ordered Telegram to return $1.2 billion to investors, with a fine of $18.5 million on the company.

1- EOS:

The largest project by the value of funds raised via an ICO is the EOS project, raising $4.2 billion.

The project was established by “Block.One” company.

The project was marketed as a competitor to Ethereum and claimed that the Delegated Proof of Stake (dPoS) platform could handle thousands more transactions per second compared to Ethereum, thus becoming a hub for dapp development.

But the platform has suffered from congestion issues, and researchers have questioned the project’s claims that it is decentralized.

In June 2020, research from Outlier Ventures indicated a massive exodus of developers from EOS development to competing projects.

On December 31, 2020, Larimer resigned from Block.One, leaving the future uncertain about the project, especially after EOS slumped by 16%.

These were the top 10 most prominent ICOs in the crypto market.

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