Ethereum’s Reign As “ICO King” May Soon Be At An End

Created by Skylar Hurwitz. Thanks to Riker, CryptoTony, and Maj for comments.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued subpoenas to dozens of ICO projects this past week, representing the start of a major crackdown on securities issued by projects under the guise of being “tokens.” Cryptocurrency veterans such as Charles Hoskinson have long anticipated such a move — particularly with the explosion of ERC20 projects in 2017 (ERC20 standard is basically a clonable crypto-asset that makes it simple to raise funds on the Ethereum blockchain). The SEC’s move became all the more likely in light of Bitcoin.com’s recent study showing 46% of ICO projects in 2017 have already failed. It appears ERC20 tokens made it so easy for projects to begin raising funds without any consideration for their legal needs — many forwent any true debate around their technical needs as well.

As this was just the first wave of SEC warnings, businesses and entrepreneurs building on blockchain protocols can expect to find themselves putting significant resources into complying with the evolving regulatory landscape moving forward. With Ethereum’s ongoing scalability debate, growing list of projects defecting from the platform, and known expenses associated with developing in Solidity, perhaps it is time we all ask the question:

Will Ethereum still be the top ICO platform by the end of December 2018?

* — Ardor “0 fee transactions” — users can experience 0 fees, but the owner of a particular “child chain” will need to pay for the verification of those transactions through a process known as “bundling.”

* — NEO Encrypted messaging — it is possible to send encrypted messages, but the process is cumbersome.