Author: Grapefruit, ChainCatcher
Recently, there are more and more news about the public sale of crypto projects. It is worth noting that these crypto projects did not choose the early IC0 platform Coinlsit as the sales platform, but turned to the new generation of IC0 platforms that have risen in a low-key manner, such as Echo, Legion, Buidlpad, etc., and these platforms have already established influence in the overseas crypto community.
Many well-known crypto projects such as Ethena, Usual, Monad, Initia, MegaETH, Fuel, Solayer, etc. have raised funds from the community through these platforms. Many overseas crypto community users admit that participating in the financing activities of these emerging ICO platforms has become their main way to obtain income.
On January 18, the first public sale project Solayer (LAYER) on the IC0 platform Buidlpad created by former Binance executives ended its sale, and the final funds raised reached 57.3 million US dollars, 545.24% more than the original plan of 10.5 million US dollars.
On January 13, Cobie, the founder of the Echo platform, revealed an interesting phenomenon: some VCs are putting pressure on crypto projects to prevent them from offering discounts to investors or conducting community sales through platforms such as Echo. Legion, an ICO platform incubated by Delphi Labs, expressed sympathy and confirmed that there are indeed VCs preventing projects from being publicly sold.
Although VCs try to resist crypto projects from participating in IC0, this just reflects that these IC0 platforms have a certain influence and have occupied an important position in the hearts of crypto project parties and communities. For a long time, the crypto community has been troubled by VC coins with "high valuation, high FDV, and low circulation", but these platforms provide users with early opportunities to participate in projects.
On the same day, Buidlpad stated that due to the large number of registered users participating in the Solayer public sale, its website was paralyzed after KYC was closed, and the sale time had to be postponed.
All these seem to indicate that the crypto ICO sector is expected to see the dawn of recovery.
Echo Crypto Angel Investor Community Alliance of "Public Offering and Private Sale"
Echo is a crypto financing platform created by crypto KOL @Cobie. Cobie, formerly known as Jordan Fish, joined Lido in 2021 to be responsible for TVL growth. He is regarded by the community as its co-founder and the initiator of the Web3 podcast UpOnly. He has interviewed many crypto leaders such as Vitalik Buterin, Michael Saylor, and Mark Cuban, and was very popular.
In March 2024, Cobie announced the release of the Echo platform beta version and completed its first financing transaction: Ethena raised US$300,000 through Echo.
Unlike previous public ICO platforms with large-scale user participation (such as Coinlist), Echo is not a public fundraising platform for retail investors, but more like a crypto investor community alliance. On the Echo platform, users are supported to create their own investment community as lead investors, and share their investments with group members to invest together, and then the lead investor can extract a certain share of the investment income.
The working mechanism of the Echo product is similar to the joint investment product Syndicates launched by the American startup fundraising platform AngelList. It aims to allow individual angel investors to raise money from other individual investors just like VCs raise funds from LPs, and then get a certain share of the investment income, so that those investors with little money but abundant resources have the opportunity to play the role of VC. Therefore, Echo is also called a crypto angel joint investment platform.
In the early days, each financing amount on Echo was usually concentrated in hundreds of thousands of US dollars, and the number of investors involved was mostly around dozens of people, which was more suitable for the early angel round and VC financing stages of the project.
Currently, if users want to use the Echo platform to invest in projects, they first need to go through the KYC process such as email, wallet, X account, etc.
It is worth noting that all fundraising on Echo is done through private sales, with no details disclosed, no marketing or publicity, and only qualified investors can see the transactions. Investors need to join the group created by the lead investor to obtain fundraising information. Now, if you want to become a lead investor, you need an invitation from Echo. Generally, well-known people in the crypto industry are more likely to be invited.
It was revealed that people such as Larry Cermak, CEO of The Block, and Marc Zeller, founder of Aave, have created their own Echo communities. Users who want to join not only need to take a test, but also need to meet certain conditions to obtain specific investment opportunities within the group.
Since its launch, more than 30 crypto projects have raised funds through Echo, including Ethena, Morph, Usual, Hyperlane, OneBalance, Wildcat, Sphere, Dawn, Derive, Monad, Initia, MegaETH and many other well-known crypto projects. On January 17, the decentralized trading platform GTE_XYZ also raised $2.5 million through the Echo platform.
Among them, MegaETH's $10 million financing through the Echo platform in December attracted the most attention and attracted the attention of the crypto community. According to an interview with MegaETH co-founder Shuyao Kong, MegaETH achieved its first financing goal of $4.2 million on Echo in just 56 seconds. The project then decided to raise another $5.8 million on Echo and completed this goal in 75 seconds.
According to Dune statistics, as of January 17, the amount of financing completed on the Echo platform has reached 66.6 million US dollars, with 6,104 investment users and 177 financing transactions greater than 5,000 US dollars. The average financing amount per transaction is about 360,000, the number of investors involved in each transaction is 130, and the average investment amount per user is 3,130 US dollars.
Based on the information of publicly available investment projects, a crypto community user concluded that Echo's lead investor recommendation mechanism and dividend model have democratized trustworthy investments, and the platform prefers to choose high-potential projects supported by a small circle of crypto elites.
Delphi Labs incubated Legion Crypto KOL Investor Alliance
Legion is an on-chain ICO platform incubated by crypto venture capital Delphi Labs. It aims to build an investor reputation system so that projects can decide the amount of investment funds and discount benefits allocated to investors. The platform announced in August 2024 that it had completed a $2 million seed round of financing, led by Cyber Fund, with participation from AllianceDAO, Delphi Labs, LongHash, etc.
The specific implementation method is: Legion provides the Legion Scores score that aggregates the on-chain and off-chain reputation systems, so that each user on Legion will be assigned a Legion score to reflect the user's value and ability in multiple aspects.
After users register on the Legion platform, they will receive a score by connecting their social accounts such as X, wallet addresses, and submitting personal information or resources that can be provided for the project. Currently, Legion's specific score assessment depends on the user's data in four aspects: "social media influence, development experience, on-chain interaction experience, investment history, and value-added experience."
Through the Legion score, investors have proven their past trading capabilities and data. Project owners can customize financing needs according to project needs, and use each investor's on-chain and off-chain standards to customize allocations, whitelists, discounts, etc., so that only specific investor groups can participate. For example, early projects can choose users with great social media influence, resources and capabilities as the first batch of investment participants, who are also the initial candidates for the project community launch. If a user receives an allocation but does not invest, your investor score will be reduced.
According to investment community users, Legion prefers KOLs with a large fan base. Therefore, Legion is also regarded as a crypto KOL investment alliance.
On January 15, Legion’s official social media account X stated that since its launch six months ago, five crypto projects have completed fundraising on the Legion platform, including: modular L2 network Fuel, DePin network Pulse, DePIN project Silencio, privacy computing Enclave, and AI Agent platform Almanak.
Among them, Fuel was launched on Bitget Exchange on December 14, and once reached $8 after listing. The return on investment through Legion has exceeded 27 times. It is the beneficial effect of Fuel that has brought Legion into the crypto community.
Buildpad, a public offering platform created by former Binance executives
Buidlpad is an IC0 platform created by Erick Zhang, managing partner of Nomad Capital. Erick Zhang was also the director of Binance Research Institute and was responsible for the Lanuchpad platform. In December 2024, it announced the launch of the cryptocurrency public offering Buidlpad platform for use by KYC compliant users in non-restricted areas.
On January 10, Buidlpad announced that Solana's re-staking agreement Solayer will conduct a public sale of LAYER tokens on the platform on January 13. This is the first public sale of the Buidlpad platform since its launch.
However, on January 13, Buidlpad stated that due to the large number of registered participants on the platform (15 times higher than expected), the start time of Solayer subscription was postponed to January 16.
According to the disclosed information, Solayer plans to raise $10.5 million at a valuation of $350 million, and provide 30 million tokens at a price of about $0.35 per token. Except for the whitelist, which can get the right to purchase SOL worth up to $5,000, each participating address must purchase SOL worth at least $50, and can only purchase SOL worth $2,000 at most.
On January 18, the public sale of Solayer (LAYER) ended, and the final funds raised reached 57.3 million US dollars, 545.24% more than the original plan of 10.5 million US dollars.
Similarly, users who want to use the Buidlpad platform need to pass KYC certification.
However, compared with financing platforms such as Echo and Legion, the Buidlpad platform is open to a wider range of users and is suitable for players who meet the KYC qualifications, which is more like the IC0 previously available to the general public.
