Analysis of the Core Competitiveness of the Five Major ICO Issuance Platforms

Author: Ash Source: X, @ahboyash Translation: Shan Ouba, Golden Finance

Initial Coin Offerings are reviving with new vigor, and this time the design is expected to be more refined.

In 2017, the initial coin offering democratized public participation, but like all emerging markets, most projects at the time were scams, with flawed incentive mechanisms, ultimately facing regulatory crackdowns. Today, it is not the concept of public token financing that has changed, but rather the operational mechanisms of capital formation: the core issues addressed are who can participate (those with actual investment and interest alignment), how quotas are determined (what value participants can bring), and how the community can be deeply embedded from the very beginning of project financing.

The market has been calling for more transparent financing methods, allowing the public and retail investors to share in the profits, rather than letting the private placement market exclusively hold the pricing power. The entire market is tired of overvalued issuances and insider quota models — this shift means that the previously small circulating supply with fully diluted high valuations in private rounds is no longer favored. Such models often trap retail investors, leaving them in a state of loss most of the time.

ICO Overview

ICO (Initial Coin Offering) is essentially a public sale where the project party directly issues tokens to users (in exchange for Ethereum or stablecoins), while achieving capital raising and community building.

The core principle is to shift ownership towards users and developers, rather than concentrating it solely in the hands of private funds or project teams. It prioritizes widespread distribution (hoping to have as many people as possible support the protocol), contribution-based ownership (distributing according to ability), and micro-communities (core fan groups), treating these as the engine for sustainable network development. Research all the initial coin offering projects that have been successful to date: Ethereum, Solana, Binance Coin, and Chainlink are typical examples.

Issues with the Current Financing Model

• High fully diluted valuation issuance with a tight circulation supply: leading to significant token unlock pressure and inconsistent interests among holders.
• Lack of pricing mechanism: The pricing process only occurs in the private placement market, subsequent rounds, and over-the-counter trading; after the project's final token generation event, the price often continues to decline.
• Exit the liquidity trap: Influenced by the above factors, retail investors often become the bag holders.
• First come, first served model only benefits a few: Robots seize shares with the advantage of speed in code and scripts, while the majority of retail investors are excluded.
• Airdrop Speculators: A specialized operation team is dedicated to manipulating points activities.

Solution for the Next Generation Issuance Platform

• Reputation-weighted participation mechanism: Participant identity and contribution are prioritized over first-come, first-served principle.
• Creator / Staker Fund Pool: Requires participants to make actual contributions before the token generation event.
• Data-driven discovery and rating system: prioritize holders with aligned interests.
• Design is Compliance: Meets the regulatory requirements of the cryptocurrency asset market, clarifying customer identity verification and regional rules, responsibly expanding the scope of participation (ensuring checks and balances)

In-Depth Analysis of Five Major Mainstream Issuing Platforms

a) Holoworld AI (HoloLaunch)

• Native artificial intelligence issuance platform that combines token sales with creator flywheel (Ava/Agent tools)
• Apart from the public funding pool, the staker and creator funding pools will allocate quotas to users who actively create and disseminate content related to the projects - turning marketing into participatory assets.
• However, Holoworld needs to compete with meme coin giants like Pump.fun, which have already dominated the traffic in the Solana ecosystem, forcing Holoworld to subsidize creators to maintain competitiveness.

b) Buidlpad (Binance)

• Developed by former Binance issuance platform operators, providing a public sale service that meets customer identity verification requirements after screening.
• Highly emphasize participant selection - Through enhancing the quality of holders and the healthy performance after the token generation event (in terms of market), the selection mechanism realizes its self-value.
• The projects currently issued on Buidlpad include Solayer Labs, SaharaLabsAI, Lombard Finance, FalconStable, and MMTFinance.
• The projects issued by this platform seem to have a 100% chance of being listed on Binance, but this also constitutes a single point of failure risk: if there are future delistings or tightening policies from centralized exchanges (no longer listing), it will undermine its core competitive advantage.

c) Legion (Kraken collaboration)

• Prioritize compliance with cryptocurrency market regulatory legislation and collaborate with Kraken to launch a reputation-based public financing platform.
• The overall legion score (on-chain activities, code repository contributions, social credibility) determines quota allocation, reducing the behavior of malicious attacks and quota farming by bots.
• The goal is to align the equity structure with participants that can bring value, which is crucial in the era of compliant, reputation-weighted public sales.
• On-chain wash trading or paid social interactions may artificially inflate the legion rating, undermining its core advantage of “ability over capital.”
• The recently oversubscribed YieldBasis sale saw demand reach 100 times the original target; the frequent refund process has left even high-rated users dissatisfied, raising concerns about transparency.

d) Echo (Coinbase Acquisition)

• Capital formation and discovery layer deeply integrated with Coinbase (recently acquired for $375 million, facilitating expanded distribution; may integrate Coinbase account and wallet functionalities in the future)
• Core selling points are clear and concise: institutional-level compliance standards, extensive distribution channels, and on-chain transparency.
• Achieving democratized participation: Any qualified individual can co-invest with top-tier venture capital firms without the need to establish a legal entity or transfer fiat currency across borders.
• However, participation still requires completing customer identity verification, and some transactions also require investors to have qualified investor status; retail investors' complete public participation cannot be guaranteed.
• Being acquired by Coinbase means that in the future, all financing for the Echo platform may be considered unregistered securities offerings (due to Coinbase's association with the U.S. market).

e) Kaito AI (Capital Launchpad)

• A platform that combines social graphs and on-chain relevance (an AI-driven value assessment system limits the participation of whales and bots)
• Through its social graph product Yaps, Kaito will prioritize quota allocation to active researchers (some believe there are certainly bots that manipulate interactions), achieving a linkage between social data and trading flows.
• The project party sets the terms, and users commit to invest. The team allocates priority quotas based on the level of reputation and interest binding.
• Four of the last six tokens (such as Novastro down 69%, Everlyn down 53%) currently have prices below their initial DEX issuance price, which may weaken market confidence in future sales.
• The Yaps algorithm is still susceptible to spam and fake interaction behaviors, allowing low-value content to potentially rank high on personal leaderboards, resulting in distorted token allocation.
• Opaque scoring mechanism: The Yap algorithm is not public, and small accounts complain of experiencing “Yaps imprisonment,” with a lack of transparency in quota allocation.

Conclusion

Since the first wave of ICOs in 2017, the following principles still hold: Distributing builds community (cultivating a core fan base to become advocates for the project); the community pursues value (the core of participation for everyone is speculation and wealth creation); value attracts developers and capital (attracting developers to create products for users, while people will fund interesting and promising projects).

The ICOs of 2017 proved that public distribution can drive network launches; however, the current issuance mechanism will verify whether reputation-based access, creator/staker funds pools, and centralized exchange distribution models can restore market trust in public financing.