Article by: 1912212.eth, Foresight News
The once prosperous CoinList is no longer what it used to be, with its wealth effect and brand reputation not as strong as before. From being a highly anticipated public offering platform to its current decline, what has happened to CoinList?
I. Overview of CoinList
CoinList was originally founded by the famous angel investor Naval Ravikan, who is also the founder of the US equity crowdfunding platform AngelList. Many years ago, the sensational Uber completed its crowdfunding financing on this platform.
When Ravikan saw that the blockchain was in its early stages, he created a blockchain version of AngelList. During the ICO craze, the Filecoin team was also preparing for a large financing, and Filecoin founder Juan Benet and Ravikan jointly established this crowdfunding platform, which later gained a good reputation in the coin circle. Although the two founders jointly established CoinList, the product, operation, and personnel all came from AngelList, but the CEO was Andy Bromberg.
Andy graduated from Stanford University with a major in mathematics and computer science, and was involved in founding the Stanford Bitcoin Group to promote Bitcoin. In addition, he is also the co-founder and CEO of Sidewire.
After briefly leading CoinList for a few years, although he still remains a co-founder, his main focus shifted to the newly established non-custodial payment wallet, beam. The CEO position was then taken over by Graham Jenkin, but he did not hold the position for long before being replaced by Raghav Gulati.
Raghav Gulati previously served as a partner at sha venture capital for nearly 6 years, and then worked as a product engineer at Shyp, Backplane, and KEEP. In 2019, he began serving as the co-founder and CEO of Apex. The Apex team collaborated with CoinList in June 2022 to improve the user experience of the latter, and after joining CoinList, he became the Vice President of Product Management, and eventually rose to the position of CEO.
CoinList's product business is now divided into two main sections, including trading, OTC, and staking platforms for users, as well as launch, testnet, seed, and registration functions for developers.
Despite facing the negative impact of the bull market turning bearish and a series of thunderstorms, CoinList has achieved good results. In its 2022 review, it stated that it had added a total of 1 million KYC users. In 2023, after the market warmed up, it added 600,000 users, with the strongest growth coming from Europe and Asia, with over 1.5 million users registered to participate, and the cumulative token sales exceeding $20 million.
However, during CoinList's growth, it has always been criticized for its very strict KYC certification.
In the past, when KYC was not strict, many users would often purchase identities through intermediaries in order to obtain higher returns. CoinList later discovered this method and imposed severe penalties.
In May 2023, CoinList specifically warned in an article that "there are serious dangers and consequences in purchasing CoinList accounts from third parties, and purchasing accounts directly violates CoinList's terms of service, which will result in the immediate termination of the relevant account." In addition, since the seller of the created account is the owner of the KYC, they can reclaim CoinList and regain access to their account at any time, and then the account seller can withdraw funds, which will cause irreversible losses to the account buyer. Malicious sellers can even attempt to regain access to the "sold" CoinList account in an attempt to hold the account for ransom. In this situation, CoinList will be unable to assist users in recovering assets.
Not long after, a considerable number of Chinese users found that their batch accounts had been banned, withdrawals suspended, and even the remaining funds confiscated by the platform.
In fact, CoinList, which focuses on compliance, has very strict KYC requirements, and users from many countries under judicial jurisdiction are prohibited from participating in new project public offerings, such as the commonly seen United States and China, which are often strictly prohibited from participating in any projects. Before each new project sale, users need to select the corresponding country and region, and submit certification materials. If they do not meet the requirements, they will not be able to participate in the public sale.
In December 2023, CoinList violated OFAC-related sanctions and paid a $1.2 million settlement. CoinList Markets LLC opened accounts for 89 users, almost all of whom specified "Russia" as their country of residence, but provided addresses in Crimea when opening the accounts.
Behind CoinList's strict KYC, it has to some extent protected its own brand compliance, but at the same time, it has left many players lamenting the missed opportunities for wealth.
II. Projects with High Returns in the Previous Period (2020-2021)
The last bull market cycle was the most glorious period for CoinList, with many well-known projects achieving huge returns through public offerings. It is no exaggeration to say that as long as you participated, you made a profit. Star projects such as NEAR, SOL, and FLOW have greatly enhanced CoinList's reputation in the industry.
Solana Blockchain
In March 2018, Solana's seed round raised $3.2 million (0.04 USD/token), and in June 2018, its genesis round raised $12.6 million (approximately 0.20 USD/SOL). In July 2019, the validator round raised $5.7 million, with a unit price of approximately 0.225 USD/SOL, and in February 2020, the launch round raised $2.4 million, with SOL priced at approximately 0.25 USD.
In March 2020, 8 million SOL tokens were auctioned on CoinList, raising a total of $1.76 million, equivalent to 0.22 USD per token. Based on the historical peak of 260 USD, the return was as high as 1180 times.
NEAR Blockchain
In August 2020, sharded NEAR conducted a public offering on CoinList, offering three options:
Option 1: Price of 0.4 USD, lock-up period of 40 days, a total of 25 million tokens, with a minimum purchase of 500 tokens and a maximum of 100,000 tokens per person;
Option 2: Price of 0.34 USD, linear lock-up for 1 year, with a maximum purchase of 5 million tokens per person;
Option 3: Price of 0.29 USD, linear lock-up for 2 years, with a maximum purchase of 5 million tokens per person.
The fundraising amounted to nearly $30 million. It is worth mentioning that at the time, due to excessive traffic and overwhelming community participation, CoinList had to postpone the sale before finally completing it.
During the last cycle, NEAR reached a near-historical high of 20.6 USD, resulting in a return of up to 60.5 times based on the cost price of 0.34 USD.
FLOW Blockchain
In August 2020, the developer of the FLOW blockchain, Dapper Labs, completed a $11.4 million financing, which included 20 institutions and 5 NBA stars. Previous round investors included Samsung NEXT, Andreessen Horowitz and its Cultural Leadership Fund, Union Square Ventures, Venrock, Accomplice, Animoca Brands, and AppWorks. New participating investment institutions included Coinbase Ventures and Distributed Global.
In September 2020, the Flow blockchain token FLOW, created by the Dapper Labs team, was sold to the community at a private sale price of 0.1 USD per token, with a total of 100 million tokens available. Although it was already at the end of the bull market when it was listed on Binance, causing the price to plummet, it still resulted in a return of nearly 356 times based on the historical peak of 35.6 USD.
Previously, some players made a lot of money by participating in the FLOW project through multiple accounts.
MINA Zero-Knowledge Proof Public Chain
In March 2022, Mina completed a $92 million strategic and private placement financing, led by FTX Ventures and Three Arrows Capital, with participation from Alan Howard, Amber Group, Blockchain.com, Circle Ventures, Pantera, and others.
Mnia Protocol can be said to be a pioneer protocol for zero-knowledge proof, and it gained a lot of attention in the previous cycle. In March 2021, 75 million MINA tokens were issued on CoinList in two rounds at a price of $0.25 per token. Subsequently, CoinList reduced the purchase limit from $1000 to $500.
Based on the historical peak price of $6.68, the return was 26.72 times.
Celo Public Chain (now L2)
In February 2021, Celo completed a $20 million financing round, with a16z, Greenfield One, and Electric Capital participating.
In May 2020, CELO completed a Dutch auction on CoinList, raising a total of $10 million, with a token settlement average price of $1. Based on the historical peak of $10.95, the return was over 10 times.
III. Projects in the Declining Wealth Effect Period (2021-present)
Unfortunately, the good times did not last long. After 2021, projects launched on CoinList often performed poorly, even falling below the public offering price, leading to many doubts. For example, NYM, AXLER, GAL, Arch, and CYBER. It was found that projects launched in the late stage of the bull market often suffered from the negative impact of the market turning bearish, even if they were endorsed by well-known VCs and had good fundamentals.
Some of these projects still performed well after the market warmed up at the end of 2023, while many others were quickly forgotten by the market.
Casper Public Chain
The project raised $28.5 million in 2020, with participating institutions including Consensus Capital, HashKey Capital, AU21 Capital, Blockchange Ventures, and GSR.
In March 2021, CoinList conducted a public offering of a total of 100 million CSPR tokens, accounting for 1% of the total supply, at a price of $0.015 per CSPR. After going live, the price briefly exceeded $1.3, but has since been fluctuating around $0.04.
Axelar Cross-Chain
Axelar was founded in 2020 and is built on Cosmos technology to provide interoperability with Ethereum and other chains.
In July 2021, it completed a $25 million Series A financing, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Dragonfly Capital, Galaxy Digital, North Island Ventures, and Robot Ventures.
In February 2022, it completed a $35 million financing round, with participation from Dragonfly Capital, Polychain Capital, North Island Ventures, and Rockaway Blockchain Fund.
In March 2022, the cross-chain interoperability protocol Axelar sold a supply of 50 million tokens at a price of $1, with a minimum participation of $100 and a maximum of $750. After going live, the price briefly touched $1 in early January 2024, but is currently still below $1.
Ondo RWA Protocol
Ondo Finance creates and manages institutional-grade financial products such as US Treasury bonds and money market funds, and builds DeFi protocols around these products. Ondo is dedicated to developing decentralized, composable protocols and providing customized services to meet the needs of organizations, DAOs, and high-net-worth individuals.
Ondo Finance was founded by Allman and Pinku Surana (both former Goldman Sachs employees) in 2021, and completed a $20 million financing round in April 2022, led by Founders Fund, a venture capital fund co-founded by Silicon Valley's top investor Peter Thiel, and Pantera Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Tiger Global, GoldenTree Asset Management, and Wintermute, among others.
In May 2022, Ondo Finance sold a supply of 400 million ONDO tokens on CoinList at a price of $0.055, with a minimum participation of $100 and a maximum of $2,000. Over 165,000 people participated in the public offering and purchased approximately 2% of its total issuance (total supply of 10 billion tokens).
In January 2024, ONDO went live and briefly exceeded $0.3, but the return is currently less than 6 times.
NYM Privacy Public Chain
Nym is a privacy platform that provides strong network-level privacy against sophisticated end-to-end attackers and uses blinded, re-randomizable, and decentralized credentials for anonymous access control.
Nym Technologies completed a $2.5 million seed round in 2019, with participation from NGC, Lemniscap, and Edenblock. In July 2021, it completed a $6 million Series A financing, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Eden Block, Greenfield One, Maven11, Tioga, and 1kx.
Subsequently, in November, it completed a $13 million financing round, led by a16z, with participation from DCG, Tayssir Capital, Huobi Ventures, HashKey, Fenbushi Capital, and others.
In February 2022, CoinList sold over $30 million worth of NYM tokens. The event attracted record demand on CoinList, with 1.19 million unique registrants during the 5-day registration period. The price per token was between $0.25 and $0.5, briefly exceeding $1.8 shortly after going live, but then began to decline. As of now, the price is still below $0.2.
Project Galaxy (now renamed Galxe) NFT Infrastructure Protocol
Galxe is a Web3 credential infrastructure dedicated to helping Web3 brands better build communities and products.
In January 2022, Galxe raised $10 million, led by Multicoin Capital and Dragonfly Capital, with participation from Spartan Group, Sky9 Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Binance Smart Chain Growth Fund, Folius Ventures, Jump Capital, Sfermion, HashKey, Injective Protocol, Matrixport Ventures, Solana Ventures, Alameda Research, and others.
In February 2022, the project planned to sell a total of 10 million GAL Tokens (out of a total of 200 million) at a unit price of $1.5. All shares (10 million GAL) in this public sale on the CoinList platform were sold out within 50 minutes, with over 1.07 million users registered to participate.
Shortly after going live, GAL briefly benefited from the NFT market, briefly exceeding $17, but then began a downward journey. The current price is $1.8, only $0.3 higher than the public offering price.
CyberConnect Social Protocol
CyberConnect is a multi-chain decentralized social graph protocol that enables developers to create social applications, allowing users to have their own digital identity (DID), content, connections, and tokenized channels.
In November 2021, CyberConnect completed a $10 million seed round financing, led by Multicoin Capital and Sky9 Capital, with participation from Animoca Brands, DraperDragon, Hashed, Mask Network, and others. In May 2022, it completed a $15 million Series A financing, led by Animoca Brands and Sky9 Capital.
CyberConnect's public offering on CoinList accounted for 3% of the total supply, with a public offering price of $1.8 per token, while the institutional price for the Series A financing was $3 per token. It raised a total of $5.4 million on CoinList.
After going live, it briefly exceeded $17, resulting in a return of nearly 10 times based on the historical high. At the current price of $7, the return is only 3.8 times.
NEON Solana EVM Compatible Solution
NEON is a fully compatible Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) that allows developers to use all familiar Ethereum tools and seamlessly build on Solana.
In November 2021, Neon Labs completed a $40 million financing, led by Jump Capital, with participation from Three Arrows Capital, Solana Capital, IDEO CoLab Ventures, and others.
In May 2023, NEON sold a supply of 50,000,000 NEON tokens (5% of the total circulation) on CoinList at a price of $0.1. After a long period of dormancy, it reached a peak of $3.8 at the end of 2023, resulting in a return of nearly 38 times, but the current price has fallen to $1.4.
Chainflip Cross-Chain Trading Protocol
Chainflip is a decentralized, trustless protocol that allows seamless value transfer between any blockchain (including BTC, EVM, and underlying networks).
In August 2021, it announced the completion of a $6 million financing round, led by Framework Ventures, and in May 2022, it announced the completion of a $10 million financing round, with participation from Framework Ventures, Blockchain Capital, and Pantera Capital.
In September 2023, it sold a supply of 4,500,000 FLIP tokens (ERC-20) on CoinList, with each token priced at $1.83. After going live, it briefly exceeded $7, but is currently trading above $5.
Archway Public Chain
Archway is a public chain in the Cosmos ecosystem that provides fast and low-cost transactions through built-in developer incentives.
In March 2023, Archway's development company Phi Labs completed a $21 million seed round financing, led by CoinFund and Hashed, with participation from 1confirmation, IDEO CoLab, Figment, Blockchain Capital, Wintermute, Chorus One, stake.fish, and others.
In May 2023, a total supply of 30 million ARCH Tokens was publicly sold on CoinList, with each token priced at $0.2. After going live, it began a downward trend, reaching a low of around $0.05. It briefly rose to $0.28 at the end of the year, but has since fallen to around $0.18, still below the public offering price.
Subsquid Zero-Knowledge Cross-Chain Data Query
Subsquid originated from a project at the Kusama hackathon Hackusama, providing support for DApps built on Substrate and reducing data retrieval time and improving API reliability for developers.
In November 2021, it completed a $3.8 million seed round financing, led by Hypersphere Ventures, with participation from Zeeprime Capital, Lattice Capital, Illusionist Group, and Digital Finance Group (DFG).
In January 2024, CoinList sold a supply of 53,480,000 SQD tokens (4% of the total supply) at a price of $0.094 per token.
zkLink Zero-Knowledge Proof Cross-Chain DEX
zkLink is a multi-chain integrated trading platform based on ZK-Rollup technology, aiming to link multiple chains and aggregate liquidity from different ecosystems to enable the trading and composition of native DeFi assets on different chains.
In October 2021, it completed an $8.5 million seed round financing, led by Republic Crypto, with participation from Arrington Capital, DeFi Alliance, Huobi Ventures, GSR, and others. In May 2023, it completed a $10 million financing round, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Ascensive Assets, SIG DTI, BigBrain Holdings, and Efficient Frontier.
In January 2024, CoinList sold a total of 31,250,000 ZKL (ERC-20) tokens, accounting for 3.125% of the total supply, at a price of $0.15 per token.
IV. Projects to be Launched This Year
After the market warmed up, CoinList also took action. After launching 2 projects in January, it will launch 2 more projects in early February, including a popular public chain and DePIN. We look forward to seeing how they will perform in the future.
Nibiru Public Chain
Nibiru is a Cosmos ecosystem L1 blockchain that supports DeFi, RWA, and other smart contract centers.
In April 2023, Nibiru completed an $8.5 million seed round financing, jointly led by Tribe Capital, Republic Capital, NGC Ventures, and Original Capital.
On February 2, 2024, the L1 blockchain Nibiru will start the NIBI token community sale on CoinList. The community sale will offer a supply of 60 million NIBI tokens (4% of the total supply) at a price of $0.05.
Meson Decentralized Physical Network
Meson Network focuses on DePIN+AI and aims to create a user-authorized decentralized physical network. Meson Network's "DePIN" nodes are developed using user-friendly technology.
In June 2021, Meson Network completed a new round of financing worth millions of dollars, jointly led by Libertus, Mask Network, and Hash Global, with other participating institutions including DCG (Grayscale's parent company), Hashkey Capital, Permanent Ventures, and BixinVC.
In January 2024, it completed a new strategic financing round led by Presto Labs with a valuation of $1 billion, but the specific financing amount was not disclosed. On February 9, 2024, CoinList will sell a supply of 2.5 million MSN tokens (2.5% of the total supply) at a price of $1.75 per token.
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