The recent ICO phenomenon has not only opened the doors to a number of projects that want to create an ecosystem of early adopters and get funding via Initial Coin Offering, but also for numerous instruments that assist ICO projects throughout the process. The instruments range from full-cycle boutique consulting agencies that work with pre-selected teams to platforms that can simultaneously serve an indefinite number of projects to automated tools for DIY ICO.

For an ICO project, the reasoning behind asking for external help to conduct an ICO is evident:

Gives much needed time to focus on the core project;

No need to dig deep into the processes that you will only have to deal with once;

No need to hire or train team members for tasks, which, again, you will probably only need to execute once.

But all of the above comes at a certain cost:

It is expensive, as most of the service providers work on a retainer + success fee basis;

Automated platforms apply the same algorithms to the entire process and limit tailoring to the project’s needs;

Often times ICO teams have to agree to a full scope of work, even though they only need help in select areas;

Fully automated platforms may lock a project within a certain ecosystem, with its wallets and exchanges, and a mandate to use an internal token as an instrument.

As the number of ICO projects grows, standard technical processes start accumulating into best practices. Whether it is a boutique consulting firm or an individual blockchain project, automating best practices while preserving flexibility saves a ton of time and expenses.

Some automate part of the scope, while others look for automation of all the steps involved, such as tech solution, legal solution, marketing solution, and PR — all of that to speed up the process.

Considering the above map, if a project decides to undertake an ICO, it faces a tough choice: 1) engaging turnkey service providers — they will tailor their approach, but they can be too expensive and may not be interested in working with smaller projects; 2) using automated platforms — they are cheaper, but they offer a pre-packaged, inflexible solution.

Other, more extreme options for a project would be learning Solidity and writing a smart contract themselves, or hiring someone on Upwork and then potentially spending months fixing it afterwards.

Seems like it is hard to find the right balance between automation, individual approach, and cost.

We, at POA Network, believe that taking the best practices and developing replicable models, which can be applied to multiple businesses, can truly advance the adoption of blockchain technology. And smart contracts for token issuance is that unavoidable step, which falls perfectly in the category of such models.

That’s why we built ICO Wizard — a decentralized, client-side, serverless, open source, free application, to make major ICO tools available for non-coders.

ICO Wizard is a tool for “do-it-yourself” ICO campaigns. The standalone DApp completely covers the technical parts of the process, only requiring a project owner to go through a simple 5-step setup. From other DIY token sale tools, it differs in two major ways: ICO Wizard is open and free. As big proponents of open source initiatives, we made it readily available to anyone, no special invitation required. There is no flat fee to use ICO Wizard and no success fee on the funds raised. We see Wizard as our humble contribution to building the blockchain community of which we feel honored to be a part.

Fabio Ciucci, who mentioned ICO Wizard as one of the examples of best ICO practices, said:

I suggested that only automated software (protocols, source codes, editors, apps) is driving and controlling the cryptocurrencies and blockchain world, so whatever best practices should be made run (embedded) on blockchain itself and not requiring any human intervention or trust.

Here is a visual overview of ICO Wizard at all the levels of interaction.

POA Network ICO Wizard schematic

ICO Wizard helps you to publish the crowdsale contracts on the Ethereum network or any Ethereum protocol-based network. It takes care of every detail needed for the token setup. You can verify the smart contracts in Etherscan and create a crowdsale page with stats. And for your supporters, the Wizard creates a page to seamlessly contribute to the campaign.

With ICO Wizard, a blockchain project of any size can launch a modern crowdsale strategy with multiple tiers, whitelists, and limits. It gives a project the flexibility to decide on all the important token sale parameters, including distribution, dates, investor caps, and many others, to create a campaign that fits the project’s needs.

On a higher level, ICO Wizard can bring innovation to parts of the world generally removed from startup action and capital access. The bright minds living far from the big tech hubs would be able to use blockchain technology to bootstrap their communities of users and to get the funds for their ventures.

ICO Wizard is already live and empowers projects (like this ) to conduct their own token sales.

Here is a short video tutorial on how to launch your token in under 10 minutes, using ICO Wizard:

Our long-term vision is running the application on Oracles POA Network, which combined with ICO Wizard’s simplicity and user-friendliness, will allow faster and cheaper smart contract execution.

As a standalone tool or in combination with the upcoming Oracles POA Network, ICO Wizard is a step towards making token sales and blockchain at large more accessible to businesses. Empowered in a new way, these businesses can unleash new strategies and business models to change our lives.

Join us in this exciting journey:

POA Network Forum — we discuss our progress updates, answer questions, reply to your feedback;

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We welcome ideas and feedback from the community and are open to collaborations!