A report recently published by independent initial coin offering (ICO) analysis portal ICORating has revealed that, in the second quarter of this year, 827 ICO projects raised over $8.3 billion, a 151% increase over the first quarter.
Per the report, EOS, which raised $4 billion, accounted for most of the difference between the two quarters. While EOS raised the funds in a year-long fundraiser, its data counts toward this quarter, as it was when the ICO concluded.
The whopping $8.3 billion figure comes as the ICO industry, as a whole, more than doubled in the last 12 months. Notably, however, most projects weren’t able to raise more than $100,000 this quarter, and only 7% managed to actually get listed on exchanges, with the average time for listing increasing by 6 days.
As for decentralized application-related ICOs, the report reads:
53% percent of all DApp ICOs were unsuccessful, i.e they failed to raise more than US$500,000. 21% of the projects which offered protocol solutions, and 32% of the custom blockchain campaigns, were unsuccessful.
According to ICORating the “overall quality of projects has significantly worsened,” a factor that could be behind the notably high number of failed projects and low returns. The top projects, on average, raised $50 million. Only 15% raised funds with an already-operating business.
The majority of projects were launched in either North America or Europe, with North America bringing in over 64% of all funding attracted. Asia-based projects notably managed to increase the amount of funds they raised, despite a decrease in the number of launched projects.
Over Half of ICOs Failed
ICORating’s data further shows that in May of 2018, “the number of successful projects doubled compared with the same data in January 2018.” In June, however, the number “decreased dramatically compared to May,” and as a result over half of ICOs failed in Q2.
55% of all ICOs failed to complete their crowdfunding (5% more than in Q1). On average, in Q2, projects raised either $1-5 million (17%) or $10-25 million (12%).
Behind these failures could be that various projects attempted to attract funds at the idea stage, before having a working product. Most of the projects that didn’t manage to raise their soft caps offered service and utility tokens, although “emission conditions, token type, and metrics had indirect effect on fundraising success.”
The median return for an investment in a token was a 55% loss, compared to the first quarter’s return of 49.3%. This poor performance is presumably connected to crypto’s falling prices. Bitcoin, the flagship cryptocurrency, saw its price drop from a near $20,000 all-time high in mid-December to about $6,300 at press time.
As CryptoGlobe covered, a study conducted by Satis Group found that over 80% of ICOs last year were scams, which managed to get 11% of raised funds. 70% of the money, per the Satis Group, went to “higher quality projects.”
