If you've been in crypto for at least a few months and been actually paying attention to the product, not just the price, you've probably been interested in ICOs or been involved in one. I've personally been involved in two ICOs and I've had some real problems with these ICOs, plus a few positives. The two ICOs I've been involved with were Electroneum and Crypterium and I'm going to talk about a few of the highs and lows in these currencies.
Electroneum
Website: https://electroneum.com/
Positives:
Security and Effort at Launch
After the ICO finished and launch date happened, Electroneum's website got stormed with heavy traffic from a group attempting to hack Electroneum accounts with known passwords from previously hacked email accounts. As soon as the Electroneum team realized what was going on (nearly immediately), they halted all operations on the Electroneum website. They then made everyone reset their password to get access to their Electroneum wallets. The only wallets operational for the first month or so were the mining wallets. The team then worked for hours to prevent future attacks to assure that everyone's coins were safe. Check out their facebook posts in November 2017 to see how they diligently worked and communicated with their followers. One example of the amazing effort Electroneum is from a Nov 7th Facebook post by them that states "I've just sent the dev team home, Adam and James had pulled another monster session with at least 37 hours straight coding. We are reconvening at the office at 7am and we'll get cracking again." Any team that didn't care wouldn't have spent so many hours into coding. It was quite amazing to see how fast they wanted to get it all launched. They also hired Hackerone to do thorough security breach tests.
Great Communication With The Community
Electroneum does an outstanding job updating everyone through their Facebook. I feel like this is a must for any good ICO to gain trust and credibility. They did a good job showing their offices and faces on Facebook too to hold people accountable to the success or flop of the coin. Electroneum posts on their Facebook almost daily so I always know what's going on with the coin. I never wonder why I'm hodling the coin because through this communication, I know why I hodl this coin and trust the future of this coin.
Quick to Get Listed on Coin Market Cap and a Major Exchange
After the release of all of their wallets, the circulating supply was quickly updated and so was the market cap. They also applied to be on Cryptopia within a few days after launch and were quickly accepted. Being a top 50 coin, I wish that they would apply for Bittrex and Binance, but cryptopia is a big enough exchange for now (with kucoin coming soon).
Negatives:
I won't be including the launch as a part of the negatives because that wasn't really their fault. There were things they definitely could have done to prevent this, but this was more an issue with what people set as their passwords.
Slow Launch of Mobile App
One of the promises for launch was releasing an android and iOS app for the Electroneum wallet and mobile miner. The mobile app has been released on android for some time, but the iOS app is still non-existent. The mobile miner finally entered beta testing a few weeks ago and is hopefully going to be rolled out to the public in the next week on android. There still appears to be no hope for the app for iOS.
Crypterium
Website: https://crypterium.io/
From the get go, I pretty much knew that Crypterium was a hype coin. The main thing that drew me to Cryperium was the promise of being able to use many cryptocurrencies as payment methods that would be compatible where products like apple pay are accepted. I still am a firm believer that crypto can replace fiat currencies, and this is a good first step towards replacing USD.
Positives:
Well... to be honest, it's hard to find much positive with this ICO. It's been a disaster from launch.
Negatives:
Coin Distribution Took Forever
From the get go, they told us to specify an ERC-20 compatible wallet to deposit into. This isn't anything new with ICOs. When it came for time for coins to distribute, coins sat pending for withdraw for weeks. It took nearly a month to get my coins. The Crypterium team claimed the overloaded Ethereum blockchain caused massive delays in distributing tokens. I'm going to be straight up honest on this one and call BS. The bitcoin blockchain is way more overloaded and never takes that long. Almost every Ethereum transaction I've done hasn't taken much longer than 10 minutes. I don't know what the Crypterium team was doing wrong, but they clearly had a flaw in their smart contract or something. I fully believe this is solely Crypterium's fault and not the Ethereum blockchain.
Facebook Updates are Meaningless
Most of the updates they provide are pretty meaningless in my opinion. Most of the updates that they have lately are ways to spread the word of Crypterium in other languages or persuading people to join their other social media outlets. They haven't had many updates as far as the actual coin goes.
Still No App
The main attention drawer and hype behind this coin was being able to use crypto as a real world payment method with their app as shown in their MVP on their website. There have been no updates on the progress of the app or an expected release date. Clearly, the app works somewhat because it is shown being used in the MVP. I feel like they will eventually upload their app, but who knows how long that will take.
No Coin Market Cap Update
When checking out the coin on coin market cap, there is still no info about the circulating supply, therefore, no known market cap yet. I really think Cypterium needs to get this updated.
Still no Major Exchange
The Crypterium team has provided no info about applying to any major exchanges. The coin has been released for some time and is mostly being traded on IDEX and Coinfalcon.
Concluding Thoughts
All in all, I really wish these teams did a little more testing and were fully ready for launch. The issues seem to be basic things. When it comes to mobile applications vs blockchain, blockchain is definitely the harder thing to program. Both of these teams had the blockchain aspect down, but the mobile app, the "basic" part of the project, is not ready. You'd think if these teams can figure out blockchain, they could figure out how to release a mobile app in a timely manner. I also wish ICOs in general did a better job of updating their community. Electroneum's Facebook page is an example of what all ICO Facebook pages should strive to be like. That helps build trust and a solid community.
Overall, ICOs are intriguing and can be addicting, but they seem to be a major pain. If ICOs were more prepared instead of trying to launch as quickly as possible, I'd be willing to participate in many more ICOs.
Please comment about ICOs you've participated in. I'd be more than happy to hear about the struggles and successes you've experienced with ICOs.
Thanks for reading!
-Logan