The concept of genius, the astounding scam, the dream of immortality, the lCO of the past six years has witnessed such a variety, what about the future?
Editor’s note: This article is from “Deep Chain Deepchain”, author .
Today, six years ago, the first lCO project in history was in the process of fundraising.
In six years, the number of lCO projects has changed from single digits to four digits, and the amount of individual projects has changed from $500,000 to $4 billion. The original niche experiment turned into a mass revelry. . Along with it is the ups and downs of Bitcoin, the blockchain’s broader public view, speculators and scammers, and the boots of supervision…[p>
The concept of genius, the astounding scam, the undead dream of riches, the lCO of the past six years has witnessed such a variety, what about the future?
This article was first published in Tencent Technology and is not allowed to be reproduced without authorization.
500,000 US dollars, the first lCO in history
The difference between the ‘cotton currency season’ in 2017 and the next ‘cotton currency season’ is that the new ‘cotton currency season’ will no longer be a white paper alone.”
On July 31, Zhao Changpeng, CEO of Chanan, made such a tweet.
The so-called “cotton currency season” probably refers to the 2017 lCO frenzy. In this year, the currency became the most fashionable word in the blockchain and cryptocurrency fields, and a set of data from lCODATA may explain the problem: In 2017, there were 875 token fundraising events, raising more than $6.2 billion. In 2016, these two figures were only 29 and 90 million respectively.
Perhaps, the term “Altcoin Season” is not enough to describe the “grandity” of the time. After all, some projects have no white papers to raise funds, which is quite magical.
If the historical clock is dialed back to Zhao Changpeng six years ago, a project called MasterCoin (which was later renamed Omni) was officially opened. In August of six years, MasterCoin is raising funds. This is the industry’s first recognized lCO project, and the six-year history of lCO magic has kicked off.
MasterCoin is a currency experiment based on the Bitcoin network, called “BTC 2.0 that survives on the Bitcoin blockchain”, and other modifications based on the bitcoin source code to generate its own blockchain. Different from the top of the mountain, MasterCoin tries to be on the protocol layer of Bitcoin.Establish a new agreement.
For MasterCoin, Babbitt’s founder, Chang Hao, once sighed on Weibo: We have just boarded the Bitcoin train and soon boarded the Mastercoin high-speed rail.
MasterCoin founder J.R.Willet
On July 31, 2013, MasterCoin officially opened lCO. To be precise, there was no such term as lCO, and a corresponding word was called “token financing” or “token crowdfunding”.
When MasterCoin raises funds, you can get 100 MSCs (MasterCoin tokens) by sending 1 bitcoin to the specified address. In order to mobilize everyone’s enthusiasm, MasterCoin also sets a reward, the sooner the BTC investment is sent. The more rewards you get.
The way MSC is acquired has attracted a lot of controversy. For Bitcoin believers, MasterCoin’s way of sending money is simply deviant. In the eyes of these people, the meaning of Bitcoin is the idea of decentralization. The acquisition of tokens is through mining, and MasterCoin is sold by developers, which is very unbelievable.
A lot of people are guilty: Is MasterCoin spending money?
Although controversial, the fundraising eventually raised 5,120 bitcoins, which was about $500,000.
A lot of people who can raise so many bitcoins, including founder J.R.Willet, are unbelievable. J.R.Willet even shows that he is determined not to “run the road.”
JRWillet at the time was unexpected. In the next six years, lCO will be transformed from a niche experiment to a mass revelry. The amount of funds raised will be changed from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions and hundreds of millions. .
The $500,000 raised by MasterCoin is nothing more than a glorious but tiny sand in the history of lCO.
The era of genius and “everyone can send coins”
For the six-year history of lCO, if MasterCoin is the prelude, then Ethereum is one of the most important scenes.
November 2013, San Francisco, Ethereum white paper draft in a coldWinter is coming out.
In fact, the first version of the Ethereum white paper was a project proposal by the genius V God in Israel, when V God was working with the Mastercoin team, and Vitalik suggested some improvements to the project.
But when V God sent this document to J.R. Willet, the founder of Mastercoin, J.R.Willet politely expressed his gratitude, saying the idea was interesting, but it took a long time to actually implement it.
“Go to you, I can do this myself.”
The perfunctory of the other side made V God determined to do it himself. Later facts also proved that this proposal, which was ignored by J.R.Willet, was a genius-like idea with a market value of 100 billion.
In June 2014, ETH began to pre-sell. In terms of fundraising methods, Ethereum also used the same form of MasterCoin as lCO. However, it was different from MasterCoin in raising only $500,000. Ethereum only took 42 days to collect. More than 30,000 bitcoins, equivalent to more than 18 million US dollars.
This caused quite a stir at the time, but Ethereum also suffered huge accusations. Looking back at the social media and forums of that period, many people commented on Ethereum as “liar”. Circle money.”
Unlike the previous lCO, Ethereum actually operates lCO under a certain legal framework. In order to comply with legal and financial regulations for ETH pre-sales, the Ethereum community has established several legal entities, including the Ethereum Foundation, established in June 2014 in Zug, Switzerland.
Because most blockchain projects do not regard themselves as companies, the foundation’s non-profit organization is a more appropriate structure. In addition, the foundation structure can effectively avoid taxation.
It can be said that the lCO projects since then are basically based on the framework of Ethereum.
At the end of 2015, Ethereum also released a standard that has a significant impact on the history of lCO – ERC20. The unification of token standards facilitates the financing of lCO projects. With ERC20, it is no longer a difficult thing to issue coins. Anyone can post their own tokens through smart contracts and be able to exchange tokens with ETH.
The era of “everyone can send coins” comes.
Ethereum co-founder Hoskinson once commented on the ERC20 token currency crowdfunding model, saying it revolutionized fundraising and decentralization