From the highly anticipated public offering ICO platform to its current decline, what has happened to the well-established new coin subscription platform CoinList? This article will explore this issue.
Background:
CoinList launched a multi-chain “Staking Fund” but charged a 15% fee and initially only supported ETH and Near.
Table of Contents:
Overview of CoinList
Who is CEO Andy Bromberg?
Projects with High Returns (2020-2021)
Solana Public Chain
NEAR Public Chain
FLOW Public Chain
MINA Zero-Knowledge Proof Public Chain
Celo Public Chain (now L2)
Projects in the Declining Wealth Phase (2021-present)
Casper Public Chain
Axelar Cross-chain
Ondo RWA Protocol
NYM Privacy Public Chain
Project Galaxy (now renamed Galxe) NFT Infrastructure Protocol
CyberConnect Social Protocol
NEON Solana EVM Compatible Solution
Chainflip Cross-chain Trading Protocol
Archway Public Chain
Subsquid Zero-Knowledge Cross-chain Data Query
zkLink Cross-chain DEX based on Zero-Knowledge Proof
Projects to be launched this year
Nibiru Public Chain
Meson Decentralized Physical Network
CoinList, which used to be in the limelight, is no longer as prosperous as before, and its wealth effect and brand reputation have also declined. From the highly anticipated public offering platform to its current decline, what has happened to CoinList?
CoinList was originally founded by famous angel investor Naval Ravikan, who is also the founder of the American equity crowdfunding platform AngelList. Many years ago, the global sensation Uber completed its crowdfunding financing on AngelList.
When Ravikan discovered that blockchain was in its early stages, he created a blockchain version of AngelList. During the ICO frenzy, the Filecoin team was also preparing for a large-scale financing, and Filecoin founder Juan Benet and Ravikan jointly created this crowdfunding platform that later gained fame in the cryptocurrency industry. Although the two founders jointly established CoinList and the product and operation personnel were also from AngelList, the CEO was Andy Bromberg.
Andy graduated from Stanford University with a major in Mathematics and Computer Science and was involved in the establishment of the Stanford Bitcoin Group to promote Bitcoin. In addition, he is also the co-founder and CEO of Sidewire.
After a short period of being responsible for CoinList, although he remained a co-founder, Andy Bromberg focused his main energy on the newly established non-custodial payment wallet, beam. The CEO was replaced by Graham Jenkin, but he was also replaced by Raghav Gulati shortly after.
Raghav Gulati previously served as a venture partner at Sha for nearly 6 years and then worked as a product engineer at Shyp, Backplane, and KEEP. In 2019, he co-founded Apex and served as its CEO. In June 2022, the Apex team collaborated with CoinList to improve the user experience, and Raghav Gulati joined CoinList as the Vice President of Product Management and eventually became the CEO.
CoinList’s product business is now divided into two major categories: platforms for users, including trading, OTC, and staking; and functions for developers, including launch, testnet, seed, and registration.
Although CoinList has achieved good results despite the negative impact of the transition from a bull market to a bear market and a series of project failures, it is still facing criticism for its very strict KYC certification.
In the past, when KYC was not strict, many users would purchase identities through intermediaries in order to obtain higher returns. CoinList discovered this method and imposed severe penalties.
In May 2023, CoinList specifically warned in a post that “purchasing CoinList accounts from third parties poses serious risks and consequences. Purchasing accounts directly violates CoinList’s terms of service and will result in the immediate termination of the related accounts.” In addition, since the sellers who establish the accounts are the owners of the KYC, they can reclaim CoinList at any time and regain access to their accounts. Then, the account sellers can withdraw funds, resulting in irreversible losses for the account buyers. Malicious sellers can even try to regain access to the “sold” CoinList accounts in an attempt to hold the accounts hostage for ransom. CoinList will be unable to assist users in recovering their assets in this situation.
Not long after, a considerable number of Chinese users who purchased accounts found that their batch accounts were banned and withdrawals were suspended, and even their remaining funds were confiscated by the platform.
In fact, CoinList, which focuses on compliance, is very strict in its KYC certification. Users from many countries in the jurisdiction are prohibited from participating in new project public offerings. For example, common countries like the United States and China are often strictly prohibited from participating in any projects. Before each new project sale, users need to choose the corresponding country and region and submit certification information. If they do not meet the requirements, they will not be able to participate in the sale.
In December 2023, CoinList violated OFAC-related sanctions and paid a settlement of $1.2 million. 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 is the protection of its own brand compliance, but it also makes many players regret missing out on wealth.
During the last bull market cycle, CoinList was at its peak, and many well-known projects that earned huge returns participated in the public offerings. It is not an exaggeration to say that as long as you managed to participate, you made a profit. Projects like NEAR, SOL, and FLOW have brought CoinList great reputation in the industry.
In March 2018, Solana raised $3.2 million in its seed round (at $0.04 per token). In June 2018, it raised $12.6 million in its Genesis round (about $0.20 per SOL). In July 2019, it raised $5.7 million in its validator round, with a unit price of approximately $0.225 per SOL. In February 2020, it raised $2.4 million in its launch round, with a unit price of about $0.25 per SOL.
In March 2020, CoinList completed the auction of 8 million SOL tokens, raising $1.76 million, equivalent to $0.22 per token. If calculated based on the historical high of $260, the return was as high as 1180 times.
In August 2020, sharded NEAR conducted a public offering on CoinList, offering three options:
Option 1: $0.4 per token, lock-up period of 40 days, a total of 25 million tokens, minimum purchase of 500 tokens and a maximum purchase of 100,000 tokens per person.
Option 2: $0.34 per token, linear lock-up period of 1 year, with a maximum purchase of 5 million tokens per person.
Option 3: $0.29 per token, linear lock-up period of 2 years, with a maximum purchase of 5 million tokens per person.
In the end, nearly $30 million was raised, and it is worth mentioning that due to excessive traffic and overwhelming community participation, CoinList had to postpone the public sale.
During the last cycle, NEAR reached a nearly historical high of $20.6. If calculated based on the cost price of $0.34, the return was as high as 60.5 times.
In August 2020, Dapper Labs, the developer of FLOW, raised $11.4 million, including 20 institutions and 5 NBA stars. Previous investors who continued to invest included Samsung NEXT, Andreessen Horowitz and its Cultural Leadership Fund, Union Square Ventures, Venrock, Accomplice, Animoca Brands, AppWorks, etc. New participating investment institutions included Coinbase Ventures and Distributed Global.
In September 2020, the Flow public chain token FLOW, created by the Dapper Labs team, was sold to the community at a private offering price of $0.1 per token, with a total of 100 million tokens available. Although it went public during the bear market, causing the token price to fall continuously, it eventually fell into silence. However, if calculated based on the historical high of $35.6, the return was nearly 356 times.
Previously, some players made a lot of money by participating in FLOW through multiple accounts.
In March 2022, Mina completed a strategic and private financing round of $92 million, led by FTX Ventures and Three Arrows Capital, with participation from Alan Howard, Amber Group, Blockchain.com, Circle Ventures, Pantera, etc.
Mina Protocol, known as the pioneer protocol of zero-knowledge proofs, attracted a lot of attention during the previous cycle. In March 2021, 75 million MINA tokens were issued on CoinList at a price of $0.25 per token. Subsequently, CoinList reduced the purchase limit from $1,000 to $500.
If calculated based on the historical high price of $6.68, the return was 26.72 times.
In February 2021, Celo raised $20 million in financing, with participation from a16z, Greenfield One, and Electric Capital.
In May 2020, CELO completed a Dutch auction on CoinList, raising a total of $10 million, with an average settlement price of $1 per token. If calculated based on the historical high of $10.95, the return was over 10 times.
Unfortunately, the good times didn’t last. After 2021, projects launched on CoinList often performed poorly or even fell below the public offering price, which raised many doubts. Projects like NYM, AXLER, GAL, Arch, and CYBER. After organizing the data, it was found that projects launched at the end of the bull market cycle often suffered from negative effects due to market downturns. Even if the projects were endorsed by well-known VCs and had good fundamentals, they could not escape the negative impact of the market cycle.
Some of these projects still performed well after the market recovered at the end of 2023, while many others were quickly forgotten by the market.The price of Axelar has been fluctuating around $0.04. Established in 2020, Axelar is built on Cosmos technology to provide interoperability with Ethereum and other chains. In July 2021, it completed a $25 million Series A financing round 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, Axelar sold 50 million tokens of its cross-chain interoperability protocol at a price of $1 per token, with a minimum participation amount of $100 and a maximum of $750. The tokens are scheduled to begin trading in the second half of 2022. Despite briefly reaching $1 in January 2024, the current price remains below $1.
Ondo Finance is a platform that builds and manages institutional-grade financial products, such as US treasuries and money market funds, and develops DeFi protocols around these products. Ondo aims to provide decentralized, composable protocols and tailored services to meet the needs of organizations, DAOs, and high-net-worth individuals. Founded by Allman and Pinku Surana, former Goldman Sachs employees, in 2021, Ondo Finance 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. Coinbase Ventures, Tiger Global, GoldenTree Asset Management, and Wintermute also participated in the round. In May 2022, Ondo Finance sold 400 million tokens on CoinList at a price of $0.055 per token, with a minimum participation amount of $100 and a maximum of $2,000. Over 16,500 individuals participated in the public issuance and purchase of its native token, ONDO, accounting for approximately 2% of the total issuance of 10 billion tokens. After its listing in January 2024, ONDO reached a peak price of over $0.3 but has since returned less than 6 times the investment.
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 financing round in 2019, with participation from NGC, Lemniscap, and Edenblock. In July 2021, it completed a $6 million Series A financing round led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Eden Block, Greenfield One, Maven11, Tioga, and 1kx. In November of the same year, it completed a $13 million financing round led by a16z, with participation from DCG, Tayssir Capital, Huobi Ventures, HashKey, and Fenbushi Capital. In February 2022, Nym Technologies sold over $30 million worth of NYM tokens on CoinList. The event attracted record demand on CoinList, with 1.19 million unique registrants during the 5-day registration period. The token price ranged from $0.25 to $0.5 and briefly exceeded $1.8 before starting a downward trend. The current price is still below $0.2.
Galxe is a Web3 credential infrastructure that aims to help Web3 brands build communities and products. In January 2022, Galxe raised $10 million in financing, with Multicoin Capital and Dragonfly Capital leading the round. Spartan Group, Sky9 Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Binance Smart Chain Growth Fund, Folius Ventures, Jump Capital, Sfermion, HashKey, Injective Protocol, Matrixport Ventures, Solana Ventures, and Alameda Research also participated. In February 2022, Galxe planned to issue a total of 10 million GAL tokens at a price of $1.5 per token. All shares (10 million GAL) in the public sale on CoinList were sold out within 50 minutes, with over 1.07 million registered participants. After its listing, GAL briefly benefited from the NFT market and reached a peak price of $17 before starting a downward trend. The current price is $1.8, only $0.3 higher than the public offering price.
CyberConnect is a multi-chain decentralized social graph protocol that allows developers to build social applications and enables users to have their own digital identities (DID), content, connections, and tokenized channels. In November 2021, CyberConnect completed a $10 million seed financing round led by Multicoin Capital and Sky9 Capital, with participation from Animoca Brands, DraperDragon, Hashed, and Mask Network. In May 2022, it completed a $15 million Series A financing round led by Animoca Brands and Sky9 Capital. CyberConnect had a 3% public issuance on CoinList at a price of $1.8 per token, and the institutional price in the Series A financing round was $3 per token. It raised a total of $5.4 million on CoinList. After its listing, CyberConnect briefly exceeded $17, resulting in a nearly 10x return from its historical high. At the current price of $7, the return is only 3.8x.
NEON is a fully compatible Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) that allows developers to use familiar Ethereum tools and seamlessly build on Solana. In November 2021, Neon Labs completed a $40 million financing round led by Jump Capital, with participation from Three Arrows Capital, Solana Capital, and IDEO CoLab Ventures. In May 2023, NEON sold 50,000,000 NEON tokens on CoinList, accounting for 5% of the total circulation, at a price of $0.1 per token. After a long period of dormancy, NEON reached a peak of $3.8 at the end of 2023, resulting in a nearly 38x return, but the current price has fallen to $1.4.
Chainflip is a decentralized, trustless protocol that allows seamless value transfer between any blockchain, including BTC, EVM, and the underlying network. It announced the completion of a $6 million financing round in August 2021, led by Framework Ventures, and announced the completion of a $10 million financing round in May 2022, with participation from Framework Ventures, Blockchain Capital, and Pantera Capital. In September 2023, Chainflip sold 4,500,000 FLIP tokens (ERC-20) on CoinList at a price of $1.83 per token. After its listing, FLIP briefly exceeded $7 and is currently trading above $5.
Archway is a fast and low-cost transaction provider for DeFi and RWA smart contracts on the Cosmos ecosystem L1 blockchain. In March 2023, Archway’s development company, Phi Labs, completed a $21 million seed financing round led by CoinFund and Hashed, with participation from 1confirmation, IDEO CoLab, Figment, Blockchain Capital, Wintermute, Chorus One, and stake.fish. In May 2023, a total of 30 million ARCH tokens were sold on CoinList at a price of $0.2 per token. After its listing, Archway started 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 remained below the public offering price.
Subsquid, developed based on the Hackusama project in the Kusama hackathon, provides support for building DApps on Substrate to reduce data retrieval time and improve API reliability for developers. In November 2021, Subsquid completed a $3.8 million seed financing round led by Hypersphere Ventures, with participation from Zeeprime Capital, Lattice Capital, Illusionist Group, and Digital Finance Group (DFG).
In January 2024, CoinList will sell 2.5 million MSN tokens, accounting for 2.5% of the total supply, at a price of $1.75 per token. Meson Network focuses on DePIN+AI and aims to create a user-authorized decentralized physical network. In June 2021, Meson Network completed a seed financing round of several million dollars, 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, Meson Network completed a new strategic financing round led by Presto Labs with an estimated valuation of $1 billion. The specific financing amount was undisclosed. On February 9, 2024, CoinList will sell 2.5 million MSN tokens, accounting for 2.5% of the total supply, at a price of $1.75 per token.
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