Recently, three agencies, namely ICORating, Token Data, and CoinSchedule, revealed the ICO stats for November — and their data varies greatly. Let’s compare their methods
Data on the funds raised by ICOs in November shows unpromising results on a global basis. Many analytical firms and agencies are making their reports, however, figures provided by ICORating ($268 mln), Token Data ($65 mln) and CoinSchedule ($353 mln) are the closest to the truth. According to the data provided by each of the three agencies, the minimum of funds raised this year is set in November.
The difference in the provided data and figures is significant, that is why we decided to refer to the mentioned agencies to get the information on their methods of gathering statistics for ICO projects. By the time of publication, we received an answer only from ICORating analytics who shared with us their strategy for collecting data.
How do you store the projects’ data?
All the data provided on the ICORating website is stored in the internal database. Unfortunately, at the moment direct access to the database is not available, but we accept requests by e-mail and review them individually: info@icorating.com
How do you count the number of ICOs a month?
The number of ICOs is counted on a monthly basis as follows: we aggregate data from open sources, thus adding the information that junior analysts could not find, and then separately count the number of ended ICOs as the total number of projects for the past month and the number of successful projects for the month. A successful ICO is a project that got more than $0.5 million within the crowdsale and did not return the investment.
How do you search for ICOs?
We collect information on new ICOs from open sources:
- listing platforms,
- aggregators of investment rounds,
- specific news resources,
- conferences,
- and investor communities.
How do you track wallet balances, in part, embrace different wallets with different currencies?
Currently, we do not aggregate data on the wallet balances due to the fact that projects often either leave the crowdsale final wallet address closed, or use several addresses to collect funds, and can also use escrow services, which also make access to the reliable data complicated. Therefore, we collect data on the funds raised from open sources: project’s social media channels, official statements, verified news sources. At the same time, we realize that in this case there is a risk to face dishonesty from the project team.
Do you take into account private sales?
If the project had only private sales, there was no public sale round and it is not planned, then we would not take private sales into account when calculating descriptive statistics on the ICO market. These funds are calculated in a separate database.
How do you evaluate a project’s revenue if it is a long-term one, like with the EOS-case?
We can say that there are few projects like this, therefore, we consider such cases individually.
During the ICO of EOS, we calculated ROI based on the data from the first round of ICO which ended in the summer of 2017. At the moment, we calculate ROI based on the data of the final round which ended in the spring of 2018. In general, we calculate ROI of the project at the end of ICO.
How we estimate funds of the projects that have crowdsale in several stages: we summarize funds for all periods of the project crowd sales and then use this amount when analyzing the project.
Would you make it a bit clearer as for how you keep track of such statistics: every month or once when the fundraising process is fully completed?
We calculate ROI of the project at the end of ICO. In addition, as part of market analysis reports, we also calculate ROI at the time of three days after the token listing on the exchange. To read our analytical reports, follow the link: https://icorating.com/reports/quarterly/
Data on the project funds are collected when the project is completed; and when we have access to the information on the number of attracted investments.
Do you take into account unsuccessful ICOs (say, an ICO planned to raise 40 mln, but raised only 800k)?
We collect data on all ICOs on the market, including funds raised and announced hardcaps. Therefore, we include unsuccessful ICOs in our statistics, with a methodological reference to the study as a warning. An unsuccessful ICO is a project that raised less than $0.5 mln via crowdsale and an ICO which has returned investments.
We would be happy to get comments from Token Data and CoinSchedule representatives in order to complete the article!
