ICO analysis: technical approach. Part I - general conclusions

I thought for a long time how to start publishing in 2018: and I realized that the answer lies on the surface - with conclusions about what I did most in 2017, that is, with an analysis of ICO and forecasts for this industry. But I will say right away that the study turned out to be voluminous, so it was decided to split it into three, at least parts.

The first will be given the general analytics of ICO together with the Icofisher.com team - the project is in the beta version, but it copes well with the task (technical analysis of blockchain projects). In the second, I will try to dwell on one of the worst projects for the industry (in Russia) - ZrCoin, and in the third - already on the world scam of the MMM format - ... But first things first.
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On Forbes, there was already an article by Anti Danilevsky from Kickico , where he is looking at the portrait of a participant in the campaigns of the initial placement of tokens, but I will try to identify other trends in a larger sample.

2017 was remembered by the ICO boom in the crypto community: yet it is extremely difficult to find clear information on this phenomenon, and many still cannot understand what it was. For a start, I tried to answer the question: “who invested in 2017 and how much?”. The basis was taken from 40 ICO data: among them - EOS, Status, Bancor, Lexec, MatchPool, Tenx, IndaHash, Raiden ...

How much total?

So what sample do we have? 500K transactions. People invested from 0 (hereinafter accounting is only for whole units) to 150,000 ETH. 95% of all payments fall in the range from 0 to 20 ETH .

Let's try to divide all investors into groups depending on the amount invested. Applying the k-means method on the entire sample as well as on individual ranges, we identified the following groups (Figure 1):

• The first range is 0 - 0.1 ETH : a rather large group of 13% of all investors in the sample. Minimum payments, most likely people made a transaction to check how the contract works or it was their first transaction in ICO projects as a whole.
• A range of 0.1 - 0.9 ETH : includes 23%. Presumably these are people who did not consider ICO as a way to make money, but simply wanted to test the technology.
• 0.9 - 1.1 ETH : 14% - those who invested 1 broadcast. The most popular payment (more on this below): why? The answer is simple: 1 air is already a tangible amount of funds for an ordinary person, not a pro investor.
• 1.1 - 12 ETH : 34% is the largest cluster. It does not look like a serious investment, but if the ICO shows growth of 10,000% (which happened: some of the ROI reached 3,500,000%, but this will happen next time), then this will turn into good capital. Say, 700 ETH, bought for 10,000 rubles. during the ICO, the peak of 2018 turned into 1,000,000 dollars.
• 12 - 580 ETH : 13% - Serious amounts, looks like a cluster with people who are willing to invest significant funds in the ICO. Perhaps these are professional investors.
• More than 580 ETH : about 1% and these are already big players: groups of investors and funds.
  Groups:
  
  Now let's estimate what contribution to the total invested capital was from each group. Groups changed a little for clarity.
  
  • 0 - 1.1 ETH : 1% Small payments + most popular payment 1ETH barely scored a percentage
  • 1.1 - 12 ETH : 9% Total we get that the contribution from 95% of all investors barely amounted to 10% of the total investment
  • 12 - 580 ETH: 53% This group invested more than half of the total. Let me remind you that 13% of investors.
  • > More than 580 ETH: 35% Major players (less than a percent) made a third of the total investment.
  
  
  
  Next, let's take a closer look at the payment frequency histogram:
  
  In the range of small payments there is a clear peak - 1 ETH: the most popular payment in our sample. It turns out that every tenth investor invested 1 ETH in ICO. There are also obvious peaks at 0.5, 1.5, 2, 2.5.
  
  
  
  In the group from 3 to 10 the most popular payment is 5 ETH (oddly enough, but 10 ETH is not popular)
  
  
  
  
  
  Then there are peaks at 50, 200, 300, 500 esters.
  
  
  
  Results:
  
  More than half of ICO investors in 2017 paid less than one broadcast or 1 broadcast ( in any confusing situation, invest 1 ETH ). But all small investors barely made up 1% of the total capital of ICO . On the one hand, this is a direct evidence that the ICO market has not become truly massive. But on the other hand, the same factor can speak about the potential of the ICO market. I suppose that having received minimal growth, people will be ready to invest more. Most of the funds raised in 2017 are medium and large investors. Judging by the nature of the peaks in the payment frequency diagram, people are guided more by the face value of the payment at ETH than by its equivalent in USD, for example, at the time of the investment.
  
  I think the general trends are clear: how they will evolve in 2018 - next time, and also consider separately the subtle interrelationships of various ICO projects and compare real figures with facts and figures from the projects themselves and various services.
  
  In particular, I asked the icofisher.com for analysis of even more, including small ICOs, as well as statistics on various projects: I think that in 2018, when this market begins to be regulated in many popular jurisdictions, it is very important to comprehend at least three important components: firstly, and is it so dangerous for the ICO for non-professional participants to take into account the above? Secondly, how will the average bill change taking into account the boom of mass arrival in November-December 2017? Thirdly, how much is the ICO expensive, taking into account the new cost of Ether and the price of Gas, respectively: and is this not a barrier for the mass participant? However, there are more questions and it is better to ask them as the answers to the previous ones are revealed.
  
  For now - everything: and before!