Hot ICOs to watch in May 2018

The cryptocurrency market is flooded with ICOs (Initial Coin Offering) in 2018. Covering countless industries, it can certainly be difficult to pinpoint a hot ICO that has real potential. We’ve previously looked at how you can evaluate the quality of an ICO whitepaper, but now it’s time to a look at what’s currently available.
If you’re interested in ICO investments, the following takes an in-depth look at the most interesting ICOs of the moment.

Top ICO List: Hottest Initial Coin Offering in May 2018

OneLedger

• $15.000.000 Hard Cap. Whitelist 9.05.2018
• 35% out of total 100 million supply designated for investors.
• OneLedger is a cross-ledger agnostic protocol that enables high-performance scaling.
• Whitepaper ICO – claims to have prototype by ICO in May.
• One Stop Shop for DApp deployment and multi blockchain integration.
• The team behind One Ledger is based out of Canada and features very strong engineering and development talent. They have experience via well-known companies such as IBM, Nokia, Amazon, and Xerox.
• The OLT token is used for transaction fees on the network. 35% of all tokens will be sold. Vesting period of 24 months for the team and 12 months for the advisors. Token metrics are considered to be average, though not stellar.
• OneLedger is going up against ICON, a much hyped and successful Korean project that’s doing pretty much the same thing.
• Some of the competitors to OneLedger include ArcBlock, NEM, and AION.
• The biggest challenge they will face is getting businesses to adopt blockchain.
• Official website: oneledger.io

NeonExchange

• $25.000.000 Hard Cap. Token Sale TBA
• Attractive token utility and metrics – 50% for sale, total 50.000.000 tokens.
• NEX is a decentralized platform on the NEO blockchain that applies a publicly
  verifiable off chain matching engine to handle trading volume and support complex orders (such as limit orders) that are not possible on existing DEXs. NEX will be one of the first exchanges to utilize NEO, NEO Gas and its own NEX token as base pairs to trade NEP-5 tokens – Switcheo was officially the first to do this.
• The NEX token does not have a specific use, but will entitle its holders to a share of the fees generated by the NEX exchange. To do this, users will have to stake the tokens in a NEX wallet, and they will automatically get payouts (similar to GAS claim calculations on the NEO network). As the platform grows, there will be more fees generated, and thus increased payouts, making the token inherently more valuable.
• The team’s technical capabilities is demonstrated by being cofounders of City of Zion, the open-source global NEO developer community.
• Even though decentralized exchange is a new space, there are already many projects working on the same area. As NEX eventually expands to include Ethereum-based tokens, it will compete with all other decentralized exchanges, of which most will likely generate a significant amount of trading volume by then.
• Official website: neonexchange.org

Phantasma Protocol

• $10.000.000 Hard Cap, Token Sale 22.05.2018.
• NEP-5 token, built on NEO blockchain.
• ICO Token Price: 1 SOUL = 0.23 USD.
• 65% out of total 100 million designated supply for investors.
• Phantasma is a new platform defining both a storage specification and a protocol for sending messages from one source to one or multiple destinations via smart contracts. With Phantasma it is possible to implement emails, chat, oracles, file transfers and other message-based systems on top of a blockchain.
• Phantasma is building a platform where users can control their own content, with a focus on interoperability, privacy, scalability and cost.
• They aim to tackle this 5 different stages – decentralized email, decentralized chat, decentralized marketplace, oracle nodes, and content streaming.
• They demoed a Proof of concept at CoZ dapps competition and won 4th place last year. They then demoed their Phantasma email service at Neo DCon, their MVP is due to be released during the crowdsale.
• The most direct competitor for Phantasma is the Telegram ICO, which has raised $1.7bn already.
• The team is from Portugal, all with good experience, notably the CEO is considered to be one of the best City of Zion developers. The CTO of Bluzelle and the software engineering lead from Storj are also on the advisory board.
• To be critical of this project, does email really need decentralization? On top of that, does it need a token? These questions have the potential to hang over Phantasma.
• Official website: phantasma.io

EdenChain

• $24.000.000 Hard Cap, Token Sale in May.
• ICO Token Price: 1 EDN = 0.0600 USD.
• 40% out of total 1.000.000.000 tokens designated for investors.
• EdenChain is a blockchain platform technology that allows all user values to be capitalized and traded on a third generation smart-contract blockchain. EdenChain can be used to provide an ICO Platform for startups to launch their own ICOs – IoT, B2B services, P2P finance, and shared economies.
• EDN will be used for transaction fees over the network, and also for risk management. Developers will need to use the token in order to use the blockchain and operate their particular service offering on it.
• EdenChain can process a high throughput of transactions at a fast speed when compared to other platforms. It does this by separating spaces and executing transactions in parallel.
• EdenChain is trying to do a lot of things – IoT, finance, shared economy and games. Without a clear focus, it could end up in the middle of nowhere.
• Official website: edenchain.io

Atonomi

• $25.000.000 Hard Cap, Token Sale TBA.
• ICO Token Price: 1 ATMI = 0.0500 USD.
• 50% out of total 1.000.000.000 designated tokens for investors.
• The Atonomi ICO provides a new security protocol and infrastructure for billions of IoT devices to maintain trusted interoperability for both data and commerce.
• The project wants to create an ecosystem that will facilitate secure interactions and commerce between devices on the IoT network, boosting interoperability, and allowing the trillions of transactions the network needs to thrive.
• Atonomi is being developed by CENTRI Technology, a notable name in IoT security. Therefore, the large majority of the Atonomi hierarchy hold leadership positions at CENTRI.
• The IoT is one of the fastest growing scenes in tech and it is far from being saturated, which gives Atonomi a lot of opportunities to grow and scale.
• The downside of this ICO is that the project really needs device manufacturers and owners to sign up for its ecosystem. If they cannot get clients onboard, they won’t be able to scale the product. On top of that, the competition in this sector is fast inceasing.
• Official website: atonomi.io

QuarkChain

• $20.000.000 Hard Cap, Token Sale May – June.
• ICO Token Price: 1 QKC = 0.0237 USD.
• 20% out of total 10.000.000.000 designated tokens for investors. Such token metrics are not particularly appealing, as it offers too low an amount of tokens to investors when compared to rival projects.
•  QuarkChain is a blockchain that utilizes sharding to provide a high-capacity peer-to- peer transactional system. It will consist of two main layers – the sharding layer, which allows for high throughput by effectively distributing data, plus the Root layer, which serves to confirm the blocks of the first.
• The project is still under development, though they secured ~2,000 transactions per second (TPS) on their early closed test.
• QKC coins are used as transaction fees for transactions performed on QuarkChain. It will also be used as reward for miners. The value of QKC coins will depend on the usage of QuarkChain.
• QuarkChain’s CEO has huge software engineering expertise and experience. The project’s Github is also very active, with its user base already trailing its testnet.
• QuarkChain has very disruptive technology and if they can reach 1 million TPS, the investors can expect nice returns. With a good team in place, it’s an ICO to keep an eye on in the coming months.
• Official website: quarkchain.io

Lightstreams

• $20.000.000 Hard Cap, Token Sale 31.05.2018.
• ICO Token Price: 1 PHT = 0.15 USD.
• 55% out of total 300.000.000 tokens designated for investors.
• Lightstreams solves the problem of data storage when sharing content on blockchain networks. Technology focuses on the requirements of privacy, confidentiality and scalability for Decentralised Applications (DApps) that interact on direct, peer-to- peer channels.
• They offer a decentralized storage blockchain – taking IPFS technology, with custom add-ons, smart contracts, and most important PRIVACY for stored files. There are not many projects on the market that offer these features and they are very expensive based on market cap.
• To provide better security, Lightstream plans to utilize Proof of Authority (PoA) consensus mechanisms and peer-to-peer file sharing technology. These two features promote smart contracting where contact creators are in full control of who receives and is denied access to the content.
• They won the Consensus Hackathon in 2017.
• Their company’s testnet is ready and live with mainnet scheduled for Q3 2018.
• However, they can’t properly articulate what exactly they want to do, the tech demo is for selling content directly.
• For a team of 6 from Estonia, they are asking for quite a lot of investment, which has made some skeptical of the project.
• Official website: lightstreams.network

Pchain

• 50.000 ETH Hard Cap, Token Sale TBA.
• ICO Token Priče: 1 PCH = 0.00010 ETH.
• 35% out of total 2.100.000.000 tokens designated for investors.
• PChain is a smart-contract blockchain, much like Ethereum and NEO, and it is comprised of one main chain and multiple side-chains. PChain aims to offer customers the possibility to build high transaction throughput dApps on the platform.
• The PChain ICO and PCH Token offer a multi-chain system designed to address the dual issues of scalability and interoperability. Toward the goal of maximizing versatility, the PChain protocol leverages features like side-chain architecture, cross- chain transactions and a smart contract data oracle.
• The architecture of PChain will employ a number of mechanisms to achieve the vision of a highly interoperable, scalable blockchain solution. The multi-chain structure allows for dApps to operate on their own side-chains, completely independent from one another.
• The team behind PChain is rather notable, with a lot of partnerships in the pipeline and multiple applications already agreeing to be built on top of their blockchain.
• It is a whitepaper project, there is an absence of prototype, which is a concern, however the protocol is impressive and credentials of the team give a degree of confidence in product delivery.
• Official website: pchain.org

Tenzorum

• Tenzorum is a larger scale project focusing on creating multi-ledger wallet/browser
• Key Management Protocol for the Decentralized Web
• Tenzorum is the unstoppable machine for self-sovereign key management and access to the decentralized world.
• Tenzorum provides the infrastructure to allow every user to interact with decentralized applications across multiple chains. It manages keys, access and is being built from the ground up to enable an user-experience friendly ecosystem of Blockchain powered products and services.
• No ICO details yet – “TBA”. It is an ICO to keep an eye on in the future as there is high interest from VCs and private investors.
• Official website: tenzorum.org

Fantom

• $39.900.000 Hard Cap. Whitelist: 28 May.
• 40% out of total 3,5 billion tokens designed for investors.
• DAG-based blockchain protocol for instant transactions and infinite scalability at near zero cost. The Fantom team has set a throughput target at 300k transactions per second (TPS).
• As a high-performance blockchain, their goal is to be among the first platforms to disrupt the existing payments and supply-chain management industries.
• While Ethereum has a limited capability of tracking past transactions, Fantom solves this issue by leveraging Story Data, which allows all past transactions to be tracked. Every transaction and smart contract execution can store a piece of data this way for functions like tracking items. For utilities such as supply-chain management where indefinite records of data are essential, this type of architecture offers immense value.
• Fantom has laid out a plan for capturing their initial target market. The website lists the South Korea Food-Tech Association as a partner, which includes the top 90 leading companies in the $200 billion food industry. The team has expressed their intention to leverage partnerships via the Food-Tech Association toward this end.
• DAG-based protocols provide one path to scalability that has in the past proven attractive to investors, with previous projects such as IOTA, Byteball, and Nano all having seen significant returns post ICO.
• According to the Fantom roadmap, the testtnet launch is planned for Q4 2018. Fantom may encounter competition from other DAG protocols like Hedera Hashgraph and Constellation.
• FACT: Fantom project needs to be able to deliver on the promise of high TPS and leverage their industry domain toward enterprise adoption.
• Official website: fantom.foundation

HyperNet

• $15.000.000 Hard Cap. Token supply, distribution, and vesting schedules have not been announced yet.
• Hypernet is a protocol for parallel computing over a decentralized, dynamic, distributed network utilizing idle computational power.
• Solution to: Data centers take too long to build, cost too much, and can’t handle the volume of data sent their way. This is why so much attention is now trained on distributed computing.
• Solution: Hypernet’s groundbreaking Distributed Average Consensus (DAC) algorithms can run all classes of problems in parallel across an infinitely scalable network, and it is not limited by the cost and time that takes to build new data centers.
• Hypernet has developed a new parallel programming model, what they call Distributed Average Consensus (DAC). This allows for data reductions to be performed for massively parallel problem sets. Hypernet is not just a marketplace for computers.
• Token used for: Collateral, Network Allocation, Reputation, and Priority.
• Their closest competitor is Golem, which carries a market cap of $600m+. Hypernet claims to be a better technology than Golem, with a team from Stanford in place to back up their claims.
• Official website: hypernetwork.io

Conclusion

Odds are you haven’t heard of some of the ICOs mentioned above, and that’s understandable. But, for every TON there are countless other ICOs that – while not quite as publicized and well funded – will give investors plenty to think about.