We are starting a new series of quarterly reports in addition to monthly ICO analyses.
The first quarter of 2018 revealed the overall downtrend in the crypto market. Total funds have decreased heavily over the past three months.
For this report, we will apply the same success criteria as used in our monthly ICO reports. Please refer to any previous reports for details. Pre-ICOs are not included in this report, however, we will discuss the top-performing projects in greater detail below.
ICOs in 2018 already raised $3.3B
In this year 390 ICOs have already completed, raising around $3.3B. Despite the massive correction, 2018 has produced half of the total funds raised for the whole of 2017. 35% of all ICOs in 2018 were successful.
The success rate and median funds are dropping
The diagram below shows you the dynamics of ICO success, which is in tight correlation with total funds raised per month.
The number of ICO is stable despite the decrease in funds raised.
The table below shows the information about funds raised for in Q1 2018
| Raised by | Total Funds | Median Funds |
| All projects | $3,281M | $5.5M |
| Successful projects | $2,836M | $14.5M |
| Unsuccessful projects | $445M | $0.8M |
Median funds are also decreasing month to month.
Crypto investments are stable
The market downfall is most likely because of the price fall between ETH and USD. Even so ETH is the main cryptocurrency used for investing. To try make an evaluation of the market in solely ETH, we converted other currencies into ETH for accuracy. After this input we can see that the total amount of ETH raised is growing, or at least stable.
If we keep all the variables the same and create a conversion at the current USD to ETH price it is clear that the market is stable.
ICO tend using Ethereum blockchain
Almost 70% of all ICOs use Ethereum blockchain to build their products. Around a quarter create their own solutions from scratch.
Top 10 ICOs raised above 20% of total market in Q1
It’s not surprising that a few projects take a huge portion of the total market.
Here is a list of the best-performing ICOs
Huge pre-ICOs have started popping up
Apart from main ICOs there are several quite successful attempts to raise funds for blockchain projects. Here is the most noticeable.
Telegram’s TON was the most prominent case for Q1, 2018. Both rounds attracted funds from a small number of private investors, rasing $1.7B in total.
Other cases have already described in our previous reports. Please take a look.
Funds distribution among ICOs asymmetrically
In the last three months, the most of the funds collected are between $20M and $50M.
The number of ICO for some fund-brackets show that ICOs tend to set unattainable hard caps.
ICO duration strongly affects the amount of funds collected
This graphic shows that most funds are collected in the first two weeks of the campaign, which is due to ICOs setting one month durations. There are still plenty of rescheduled ICOs and the ICO success rate has heavily decreased over time.
The graph below shows that after two weeks more projects becoming unsuccessful.
Conclusions:
- The overall amount of funds raised was $3,281M in Q1 2018. This was distributed between 390 ICOs.
- Apart from the top ICO campaigns the market is driven by massive private sales and “non-ICO” fundraisers. These ‘preliminary investments’ contribute $6.3B to the market, exceeding the whole 2017.
- 35% of all projects closed successfully in Q1.
- 70% of ICOs are ERC20-compliant, built on the Ethereum blockchain.
- Top 10 ICOs make up 20% of the market.
- The majority of funds raised by projects is between $20M and $50M.
- ICO success rate depends on the campaign duration and is heavily decreasing over time.