The year of 2018 is becoming increasingly hopeless for startups (some even speak about the end of an ICO era), who decided to raise funds through the ICO procedure for reasons that have been discussed a million times by everyone and everywhere. But this time we decided not to follow the general trend of criticism nor pessimism and find a light among the darkness of broken hopes — the projects that have already achieved success in 2018 or are on their way to it.
It's All About the Idea
There are few really cool ICO ideas, otherwise, the laws of the market could be thrown into the garbage: the ratio of efficient investment projects to potentially unsuccessful ones is 1:100. It’s not because of the fact that most developers’ brains function badly, but of the fact that there are too many “innovative” ideas. The human brain has made a way too big of a leap forward over the last 100 years and the competition for these ideas is too harsh.
Another huge disadvantage of ICOs is poor market research, in other words, projects really don’t study whether consumers need their project at all and whether there will be a public demand. That’s why the projects that came out with ICOs simply have no revenues to cover their current costs.
Therefore, really promising ICO projects with cool and unique ideas are now worth more than gold. And as a rule, they attract the attention of potential investors.
It is noteworthy that in 2018 ICO projects moved away from the sphere of financial efficiency improvement (for example, crypto exchanges) - the specialization of projects was significantly diversified and you will see it below.
Here are the best startup projects in 2018 in our opinion:
BLOCKCLOUD
What to offer?
Blockcloud has set itself the goal of becoming a scalable solution for the growing IoT industry with an implemented reward system for participants, service providers, and miners.
The Blockcloud team plans to use the SCN (Service-Centric Networking) solution, which can be attributed to the concept of web 3.0, built on the use of service names instead of addresses of web resources. By using blockchain, this platform will be able to provide a safe connection of network providers to user devices.
Why it may be useful?
Due to the fact that the demand in the industry is constantly growing, and an increasing number of devices is becoming interconnected, the scaling of the IoT industry can be carried out really effectively.
What does the community say?
Another important reason to pay attention to this platform is the steady mood of the market participants regarding the project and its well-developed community. At the beginning of the ICO stage, the project received a lot of positive feedback from the web community.
And what about the money?
The positive factor of this blockchain architecture is the amount of raised funds, which in fact is one of the main indicators of the project’s future. As such, it intended to collect $15 million for eight days from October 11 to October 18, 2018, and achieved this goal easily.
SCORUM
Who will use?
Scorum is aimed at fans who can earn real money. However, users need to first earn some internal rating and then for particularly interesting comments, original photos and other interesting content they can receive an internal currency (exchanged for fiat money).
How does it work?
The platform has its own analytical tools for making forecasts. And of course a full range of features to track the broadcasts of sports events. With the help of blockchain technology, it’s possible to introduce market principles for the scores formation, comments of publications, forming a reward for their authors. This platform allows participating in the formation of own media space.
Crowdfunding results
Scorum collected a fairly modest amount of $5,63 million during the token sale period in January-February 2018, which is only 33% of the planned $17 million, but this had no effect on the development of the platform and its launch.
The Scorum Coins market capitalization according to CoinMarketCap.com currently works out over $6 million, that can be apprehended as a positive factor and even indicate a certain increase of investors’ interest over the last six months. It is a lot for the altcoin in the constantly shrinking cryptocurrency market.
BRAVO
Who are they?
The Bravo Group was created in 2014 by graduates of TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield Alumni Maria Luna and Dr. Hector Rodriguez. Their basic idea was taken to TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco in September 2015 and won the Audience Choice Award.
What does it offer?
BRAVO decided to revolutionize the anonymous payment industry with its mobile payment application. BRAVO plans to implement blockchain technology and tokens to ensure anonymous and secure transactions worldwide with minimal fees. BRAVO is currently a working app with a large number of clients.
While using the BRAVO app, assets can be received via a simple PIN-code, and there is no need to open or close the keys. Sending fees is a basic function and assets can even be sent through a third person.
Why is it special?
BRAVO is one of the few ICO companies that actually has a developed business solution, the mobile app, which can be downloaded from Google Play and Apple App Store. In 2017 the project began introducing blockchain technology. After ICO, which will be held in the third and fourth quarter of 2018, the main releases of the platform will be outlined. Testing the blockchain wallet will be completed at the end of 2018 and in 2019, the release of the remaining functionality will come to life.
The company has repeatedly noted that the development of applications is conducted in a close cooperation with users, that is all the basic needs of consumers are constantly taken into account, and appropriate updates are being made.
Other projects worth paying attention to
A decentralized application hosting platform that leverages sharding, experienced a more than 1,800% increase in its token price after its ICO with a market cap of $263 million.
The project is developing an international ecosystem to develop the production of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and robotics. The project includes its own and partner research laboratories, technology parks and other enterprises and online platforms for bringing together developers, investors, and customers from around the world.
It is a database for those who professionally develop decentralized applications that serve the functioning of blockchain technology nodes.
An open-banking platform designed for users working with cryptocurrencies. This is a customizable and easy-to-use tool that will become indispensable for conducting operations in the world of the crypto economy for both, beginners and people with a considerable experience with cryptocurrency.
A personal identification platform. It tracks the evolution of all supporting documents and, on their basis, generates keys for registration in third-party applications and services.
What we wanted to say
The most promising ICO projects of 2018 are very diverse in their functional purposes and cover absolutely unexpected sectors of public interest. But the main thing is that startups using blockchain technology are an exclusively commercial trick. For its full operation, it requires a large amount of equipment, free space and skilled professionals. All these things form a commission for each performed transaction.
It’s unnecessary to give any subjective assessments, describing the mentioned projects. Their demand will be assessed by the market: if users agree to use the resources of a particular platform and pay the blockchain commission, then this project is successful.
At this moment, we should keep in mind only one thought — promising ICOs of 2018 are not the ones that offer the most extravagant and innovative services, but only those where users are ready to pay.
