Only Q2! Not even including the $200m+ for Filecoin.

The ICO madness is real. Over $1B has been raised in just the last 6 months in ICOs. Massive wealth is being accumulated by dev teams looking to decentralize the web. Fortunes are being made in seconds.

The headlines are filled with “______ ICO raises $XXX in 30 seconds.” But what about the unsung heroes, what about the infrastructure that makes this madness possible. The on and off ramps, the wallets, the storage providers, the blockchain explorers. The infrastructure of cryptocurrencies and ICO funding is still extremely nascent which means a ton of gaps still looking to be filled. As a VC this tells us there are massive opportunities. While everyone is looking for the next big sexy ICO, we are looking for the boring infrastructure play (to add to our portfolio of more than 60 other blockchain/crypto companies) that will be essential if this market is to mature.

If you’ve participated in an ICO before, you’ve seen the gaps in today’s infrastructure. With the large sums of money being sent to ICOs today we should not be content with the current infra. And certainly if we believe this technology is to truly reach the global population we have a long way to go!

How to participate in an ICO today:

1. Get Ether: Sign up for Coinbase **we are an investor** (easiest way to buy/sell ether with more than 10 million users), link bank account, buy ether, receive ether 7 days later.

DIFFICULTY: low ; TIME: high ; MARGIN OF ERROR: medium

2. Send Ether to ICO approved wallet: Most ICOs only accept from certain wallets. Most widely used wallet for ICOs is MyEtherWallet **we are an investor** (client-side interface for generating Ethereum wallets). Set up wallet — steps being — create password, generate wallet, print paper wallet backup or write down private key. The important thing here is that no one else has access to your wallet, there is no ‘Forgot Password’, there are no do-overs. Once you have created a wallet you now have an address you can send to. Send Coinbase -> MyEtherWallet public address.

DIFFICULTY: medium ; TIME: low ; MARGIN OF ERROR: medium

3. Verify Ether has sent: One of the most widely used tools in the cryptocurrency ecosystem is Etherscan **we are an investor**. This is the blockchain explorer that you can check to view all publicly recorded transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. Since you have a public address on MyEtherWallet, you can now put that into Etherscan and check to make sure the ether is there.

DIFFICULTY: low ; TIME: low ; MARGIN OF ERROR: low

4. Send Ether to ICO and receive tokens: Each ICO has its own requirements but assume it is ‘straightforward’ and they show you an address, you sent ether to it and they send back tokens to the address. The few details you need to get correct are gas prices, data field entry, amount of ether to send. This step is by far the most difficult as each one is different, timing matters, and congestion on the network occurs.

DIFFICULTY: high ; TIME: medium ; MARGIN OF ERROR: very high

5. Verify tokens are in Ethereum Wallet: Check Etherscan or MyEtherWallet as both should show the same information. Getting from step 4 to step 5 successfully is a huge step that I have seen many people unable to get to for one reason or another. Some of those being: sale has concluded, sent to wrong address, transaction declined due to gas, network congested, scammed and there are more.

DIFFICULTY: low ; TIME: low ; MARGIN OF ERROR: low

6. Congrats! You participated in an ICO. You did it! **drinks champagne **

DIFFICULTY: low ; TIME: hopefully long ; MARGIN OF ERROR: +/-🍾🍾

7. Secure the tokens: I love MyEtherWallet but you should not rely on them alone for securing your tokens. Best bet today is set up a hardware wallet (or paper wallet). Sounds difficult. It is. First buy a Ledger or Trezor. Wait a month for backorder. Set up process around 30 minutes. Connect to MyEtherWallet and send tokens to the new public address. Having a hardware wallet makes sure the private information is not on your computer, thus if your computer is compromised you should still not have your tokens stole.

DIFFICULTY: medium ; TIME: high ; MARGIN OF ERROR: medium

Sounds like the infrastructure is there 🙃

What are we missing?

We are far away from a painless version of a tokenized world. What are we lacking most and what opportunities are we looking for now?

UI/UX: This is broad but we do not have enough designers in the space. I will also be interested in backing companies that innovate with a design mentality first and foremost. Uber/AirBnB were design innovations and I think we are still lacking those products in crypto. Storage: Storage is still terrifying. I have conversation after conversation with people who lose sleep on a daily basis because they are crossing their fingers nothing breaks: either their web wallets or hardware wallets. Security: Cryptocurrency is the world’s biggest bug bounty program. Once the crypto moves it is GONE. Everyday people are being targeted by hackers in the form of phishing emails and slack messages, cell phone takeovers and other classic social engineering. I am extremely interested in projects looking to keep people safe and I think people would be willing to pay large amounts for this. What else do we need? Please let me know. brayton at boost vc

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE this new token craze that has blown up in the past 12 months and we have been fortunate to be a part of some of the best (Filecoin, Aragon, Tezos, District0x, Decentraland). The world has just experienced the most revolutionary crowdfunding mechanism to date and it certainly is not going away. We have been fortunate to invest in some of the best infrastructure companies who have made it happen: Coinbase, Etherscan, MyEtherWallet, Polychain, Protocol Labs (Filecoin/IPFS), BlockCypher and dozens of others.

If you are more interested in building this infrastructure than running an ICO, email me at brayton at boost dot vc!