ICO market is becoming more active than ever before, and one can hardly deny that it is the signature form of investment in the digital age. Let’s have a look at the early 2018 ICO market through the chart below.



Above 20-million-USD ICOs

Let’s go through 10 largest names in the list.

Top 10 ICOs in 2018
1. Telegram: $1.7 billion
Telegram is the hottest name in the 2018 ICO market with $1.7 billion raised in just two pre-sale sessions. This fund is used to develop the Telegram Open Network Blockchain, including the Gram cryptocurrency. It is designed to provide faster transaction processing speed than that of Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains. Telegram Open Network is said to be comparable with Visa and Mastercard.

2. Dragon: $320 million
This is a cryptocurrency on Ethereum Blockchain, which is strongly backed by plenty of casinos in Macau. The project aims at enhancing digital convenience for casino players, reducing costs yet still ensuring transparency and security thanks to the anonymity of the cryptocurrency Dragon. Despite the huge fund of $320 million,there remains a big difference compared to Telegram.

3. Huobi: $300 million
Houbi, one of the largest crypto exchanges in China, announced the launch of their token (Huobi Token - HT) on January 23, 2018. However, this is not considered an ICO, and, as made clear in their press releases, only active users in the platform are eligible for HT. There’s a total of 500 million tokens, of which 300 million will be delivered to investors and the rest will be retained to encourage users or reward the team.

Here are the impressive amount from other on-top projects:
4. Bankera: $150.9 million
5. Orbs: $118 million
6. Envion: $100 million
7. Flashmoni: $72 million
8. Neuromation: $71.7 million
9. Elastos: $70 million
10. Zeepin: $61 million

Overall comments on ICO market
The chart shows the imbalance in the current ICO market. Telegram with $1.7 billion is at the center and makes up the bulk of the market. In fact, the fund raised via this project is greater than the sum of the other nine in the top 10. After Telegram, only two ICOs exceed $300 million, three exceed $100 million and others struggle to reach $100 million.

See also: Blockchain programming

In addition, the chart illustrates the profound differences between layers form by ICOs with the above-20-million-USD projects making up 115 bubbles. It can be seen that the field of cryptocurrency is progressing at an amazing speed, and this trend makes it difficult to identify noteworthy projects. Recent research also shows that the market is vulnerable to fraud, although it seems to be of little concern to investors. A rapidly changing market also indicates that many ICOs are burned, leaving more than 800 coins/tokens dead.