What a week in the Token Economy, folks!
 
A few high profile ICOs brought the Ethereum network to a halt, while a flash-crash on GDAX ETHUSD book took ETH price down to $0.10 in seconds and some serious questions were raised on the code of a project that raised c. $150 million only a week ago.
 
These events are clear signs of the inevitable growing pains of a fast moving ecosystem. The great thing is that lessons get shared and spread widely and the bar gets raised every time.

Let's dive right into it, but only after you've read Naval's tweetstorm. What a magic example of a clear and genius mind.

As we explore the whole new world of the token economy, we'll find many new concepts and ideas. Some seem minor and some bigger.
One that seems major to me is the concept of public scrutiny of a company's (or maybe a project) developments.

This week we've seen this in action with some back-and-forth between public analysts and the company itself, when Bancor responded to some dissents on its model and ICO.

Emin Gur Sirer started with a 29-points Bancor takedown.

To which the company responded with a point-by-point rebuttal.

Then, Udi Wertheimer published his Bancor Unchained: All your tokens are belong to us warning (albeit a bit late) to which the company granted an additional ad-hoc response.

Whatever opinion you form on the Bancor protocol and project from the above articles, I think it's worth comparing this MO with the traditional "get yourself in a garage" startup model, especially with the latest "let's try to never get public" attitude that the latest unicorns are adopting.

In the token space, projects and companies are constantly being judged on their actual code and release schedule.

This is even more impactful than the traditional equity public markets, where analysis is often based solely on the companies' quarterly revenue figures.

It will be fascinating to see how much of the actual usage metrics will be open and how both companies and investors will adapt to this new world.

Demand for ICO tokens does not seem to diminish. This above is a chart tweeted by Myetherwallet a few hours after the Status ICO started, it shows number of transactions originated via their wallet per hour. The Ethereum network came to a complete halt, lots of frustrated users wasted hours and gas as many services stopped withdrawals or transfers of ETH while the network cleared backlog.

Status ended up raising ~$90M for its ICO, and the whole dynamic ceilings concept utterly failed to provide a good experience for buyers and ETH users everywhere.

At the same time, Civic raised $33M with a much more thoughtful and elegant approach. In a blog post the founder explains how Civic optimized for network success.

Omise didn't even get to do its ICO as it went way over its target in a pre-sale.

SONM raised $42M and that's almost not news anymore.

And obviously TenX, which raised its 200,000 ETH (~$60M) hard cap in something like 7 minutes for yet another payment card.

I will leave you with an image of the TenX twitter feed, which I think reflects well enough the madness going on on all sides.

👔  JOBS: Visa and Booz Allen Hamilton are both in the market for Blockchain engineers with Ethereum experience. Visa has been actively looking at the blockchain to facilitate international B2B payments (partnering with Chain).

Token Economy is curated by Stefano Bernardi and Yannick Roux.

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