Update: Dfinity seed round raised 3.9 Million CHF at close

Dfinity, a new crypto ICO, raised its target of 1 million CHF (Swiss Francs) in just under 75 minutes. The Dfinity seed round started at 6:00pm GMT on 12th Feb 2017 and ended at 7:15pm GMT on the same day. Due to the soft cap of the round (see below), the seed round ICO will go on until around 7:15pm GMT on 13th Feb 2017.

This was for its ‘seed’ round. Dfinity will have another round of funding in the future as well, as part of its ICO efforts. Due to the earlier stage of the seed funding (and thus a higher risk of investment), there is a bonus to invest in the seed round compared to the follow-on round.

The project raised an impressive amount of money in a quick time. It is possible that institutional funds have invested a good amount of money in this project.

Dfinity ICO Soft Cap

Dfinity ICO is also unique in having a ‘soft cap’ on the amount of money raised instead of a hard cap or no cap.

In hard cap ICOs, the ICO ends whenever a certain threshold of funds is reached. This presents problems if the ICO is ‘oversubscribed’ i.e. if many people want to invest in the ICO. For example, SingularDTV put a hard cap of $7.5 million on its ICO. However, it was sold out in under 15 minutes. This causes the token distribution to go to speculators more than the believers and early adopters of the project. This can be quite problematic when the purpose of the ICO is as much to create that initial set of users and early adopters as much as it is to raise money.

In no cap ICOs, there is only a time limit up to which an unlimited amount of funds can be raised. The biggest problem with this model is that investors don’t know how much the tokens they are buying are worth, because it depends on how much the total funds are going to be raised in the future. This can present situations like The DAO which would have been a worthy experiment at $5 million raised but not at $100 million raised.

Dfinity is structuring its ICO as a ‘soft cap’, which means they will allow 24 hours after the goal is reached as the cut-off. This will prevent ‘insta-ICO sellout’ situations like FirstBlood and SingularDTV tokens. Therefore the Dfinity ICO will still be open for the next 24 hours after reaching the 1 million CHF goal.

About Dfinity and the ICO Token

Dfinity is a project similar to Ethereum (although they say they don’t compete with Ethereum) in that it allows the execution and creation of arbitrary smart contracts. The biggest difference is that instead of the smart contract code being the ultimate authority (and having situations like The DAO when a bug in the contract code can cause a loss of funds), Dfinity has a group consensus process it is calling the Blockchain Nervous System (cheesy name). There are many limitations on using it, but it can be deployed for special situations that would prevent issues like The DAO.