ICOs: Raising the Standards

by Dylan Hess

One of the goals of the internet from its inception was to decentralize: setting up a platform for transactions of information that can be made and shared by anyone. Many unlikely people of the internet ended up making a lot of money, and it curated a different breed of wealth. Meaning those whose initial objective was not to make money; a breed involved in a search for a higher purpose other than to be rich. We see Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and many others more interested in giving everyone a level playing ground than solely capitalizing on their profits. Blockchain as a decentralized network is no different, and ICOs are decentralizing the investment process. ICOs gives anyone with knowledge of cryptocurrency the opportunity to participate in making something big happen.

ICOs have been getting a lot of flack lately because of their lack of transparency. Anyone can start an ICO. The great thing about this will be the fresh ideas brought out by people who wouldn’t normally have access to a lot of funding. The downside is that literally anyone can make an ICO with a fancy website and run away with your money. This doesn’t mean ICOs are a terrible thing; it just means there are some new situations that need to be addressed for us (the investors) to trust. Sure, you can go by way of Filecoin and allow only accredited investors. But like I said before, allowing the community to participate brings with it a lot of benefits and allows the company to grow in a different way: a larger base of dedicated believers that can push the organization’s agenda in innovative ways.

What we need is a new standard to raise funds. ICOs need to abide by some sort of transparency to bring a level of trust to the community that lets them feel safe investing.

So what can we do to raise the standard?

Auctus wants to create a gold standard for raising funds on their ICO

Top Priorities: Transparency and Trust

Transparency

ICOs need to let its investors know where that money is going. Beyond putting up the standard distribution agenda in their whitepaper, Auctus will be tying up all funds in smart contracts. After the sale, 20% of funds made will be promptly available for the team but the remaining will be only let out in portions every month until depletion of ETH for at least 2 years.The trust of the money goes partially to a trustless system: it will be impossible for Auctus to take more Ethereum out than what the smart contract states. Regulated Ethereum offloading is a big step towards developing long term goals for the team, which in turn creates longevity of the project.

Hard Cap

Hard caps show that the ICO is organized enough to understand what exactly they need. The ability to create a realistic budget develops a larger trust between the ICO and the audience. Auctus set hard caps for both the pre sale and the token sale.

Register to Participate

Registering gives everyone a fair shot at participating in an ICO. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from this past summer is how easy it is for an ICO to crash from server overload. Registration takes away the stress of needing to wait for the very second that the ICO opens. It also allows for a much safer experience; no easy funneling of money into a hacked Ethereum address, like what happened to Coindash in July.

Individual cap

Open-source projects should always encourage the participation of as many people as possible, it’s not interesting for us that just one or two big investors get all our public investment share. Implementing an individual hard cap allows that everyone that wants to contribute manage to do so, without having to hurry up.

Intentions

Clear, transparent intentions are necessary for the project’s success and for investors to truly believe in the project. Auctus makes it clear that they want to be a long term project for blockchain; blockchain is not going anywhere, and while the cryptomarkets seem volatile, we can be sure to see blockchain as a technology to last decades. Auctus takes a big step to solidifying blockchain’s importance by applying it to pensions, which is a digital asset that needs a better long term solution.

Tagging along with intentions comes decentralization. An ICO should be promoting true decentralization with their product; it should be revolutionary in the way that it creates a product for the people, not for those in places of power. Decentralized platforms give transparency where centralized platforms fail to. Centralized platforms capitalize on withholding information, or acting as a third party. Auctus uses the decentralized aspect of the blockchain to keep out fraud in holding funds. Funds held by smart contracts cannot be tampered with or altered from hackers or people (no matter how involved you are in the organization). You will be able to see exactly what is happening with your funds at any given moment. Pensions have never had this level of transparency, and Auctus brings this through its intentions to keep decentralized.

Like many decentralized concepts that have birthed from blockchain, ICOs have potential to disrupt. ICOs give opportunity to the organizers to create and give a larger public the chance to invest. Because regulations are volatile, it is up to the ICO to raise the standards and provide proper trust and transparency.

Meanwhile, we welcome you to join Auctus pre-sale whitelist at auctus.org and invite you to follow us on social media.

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