One popular narrative about 2017's says it was fueled by naive investors duped into throwing money at projects that were either incapable or had no intention, of delivering. ICO mania The utopian vision of crowdfunding capital for the development of open-source software platforms by selling crypto-assets was a dangerous pipe dream. There is plenty of truth in this narrative, but the other side of the story often gets overlooked. The teams behind several ambitious projects have been heads down coding, shipping, and maintaining transparent communications about their work for several years. Those who purchased tokens to support these projects have experienced some staggering returns. Because of their high risk-tolerance, the global public is gaining access to a powerful suite of Ethereum-based protocols and applications. in 2015 to build the world's first decentralized prediction market, a betting platform where anyone can buy or sell shares representing the outcome of any event, and share prices reflect realistic probabilities that events will occur. Augur raised $5.2 million in ~1.5 months Augur V1 was a functional proof-of-concept that was never expected to gain much mainstream traction. V2 just went live and introduces designed to increase adoption. Augur's holders can earn a portion of market settlement fees by correctly reporting on event outcomes. REP is up by . several improvements REP token ~3000% since the ICO in 2017 to develop an alternative decentralized prediction market protocol. The Gnosis team focused on building tools for developers rather than delivering their own globally accessible applications. Gnosis raised $12.5 million in 12 minutes Live prediction markets like , , and demonstrate the power and flexibility of Gnosis' . is used to generate OWL tokens which are used to pay fees on Gnosis-based platforms. Omen Polymarket Sight Conditional Token Framework The GNO token in a day in August 2017 to build a protocol for decentralized exchange of ERC-20 tokens. The 0X network has generated from traders. 0x raised $24 million $1.5 billion in trading volume, 1.55 million trades, attracted 41.44k active traders, and collected $124k in protocol fees The team has also deployed a user-friendly crypto trading application, . The to earn a portion of protocol fees and also on 0x improvement proposals (ZEIPs). ZRX is up by ~459% since the ICO. Matcha ZRX token can be staked be used to vote in a day in 2017 to build a decentralized exchange and payment service. The Kyber Network has facilitated in trading volume from over 84,000 unique addresses, collected ~1,500 ETH in fees, and successfully transitioned to . can be used to earn a portion of collected ETH fees by voting on the Kyber Network's key parameters. Kyber raised $48 million over $1 billion ownership by DAO The KNC token raised in 29 minutes in 2016 to build a decentralized global supercomputer that allows anyone to sell computing time over the web. The 112 nodes, 826 CPU cores, 1.46 TiB of RAM, and 16.80 TiB of Disk space. Golem $8 million Golem network currently boasts Golem has secured partnerships with the likes of . is used to rent computing power on the Golem network and is up by ~580% since the ICO. Intel, Texas A&M, and UNC The GNT token to build an asset management protocol that allows anyone to set up or invest in a transparent, smart contract-based investment fund. Melon raised $2.9 million in a month in 2017 Melon currently has . The team has also delivered on their promise to . 357 funds, 416 investors, and ~$1.3 million in total assets under management hand control of the protocol over to a DAO is used as "asset management gas", collected and burned by the protocol when users set up or invest in funds, and when fund managers claim fees. The MLN token Yes, the majority of ICOs were duds and the mania attracted fraudsters along with overly ambitious teams. Similar dynamics exist in the world of where of businesses eventually fail. It would be a mistake to focus solely on the failures of the first ICO wave. venture capital and startups ~90% The speculative mania helped support radical innovation from capable teams who are responsibly using their crowdfunded treasuries to build sophisticated infrastructure for open and permissionless global finance. Disclosure: I participated in the Augur, Gnosis, and Golem ICOs. I hold ZRX and MLN.

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