The Dawn of the Crypto ICO Sector: Echo, Legion, Buidlpad, and the Rise of New Generation IC0 Platforms

Recently, there are more and more news about the public sale of crypto projects. It is worth noting that these crypto projects did not choose the early IC0 platform Coinlsit as the sales platform, but turned to the new generation of IC0 platforms that have risen in a low-key manner

In recent times, there has been a surge in news regarding the public sale of crypto projects. Notably, these projects have not opted for the early IC0 platform Coinlist as their sales platform. Instead, they have turned to a new generation of IC0 platforms that have quietly risen in popularity, such as Echo, Legion, Buidlpad, and others, which have already established a strong influence within the overseas crypto community.

Many well-known crypto projects, including Ethena, Usual, Monad, Initia, MegaETH, Fuel, Solayer, etc., have raised funds from the community through these platforms. According to many overseas crypto community users, participating in the financing activities of these emerging ICO platforms has become their primary method of generating income.

On January 18, the first public sale project, Solayer (LAYER), on the IC0 platform Buidlpad, created by former Binance executives, ended its sale with final funds raised reaching $57.3 million, exceeding the original plan of $10.5 million by 545.24%.

On January 13, Cobie, the founder of the Echo platform, revealed an interesting phenomenon: some VCs are pressuring crypto projects to prevent them from offering discounts to investors or conducting community sales through platforms like Echo. In response, Legion, an ICO platform incubated by Delphi Labs, expressed sympathy and confirmed that there are indeed VCs preventing projects from being publicly sold.

Although VCs attempt to restrain crypto projects from participating in IC0, this merely reflects the significant influence these IC0 platforms have attained, occupying an important position in the hearts of crypto project parties and communities. For a long time, the crypto community has been troubled by VC coins with "high valuation, high FDV, and low circulation," but these platforms provide users with early opportunities to participate in projects.

On the same day, Buidlpad stated that due to the large number of registered users participating in the Solayer public sale, its website was paralyzed after KYC was closed, and the sale time had to be postponed.

All these indicators suggest that the crypto ICO sector is expected to see the dawn of recovery.

Echo: Crypto Angel Investor Community Alliance of "Public Offering and Private Sale"

Echo is a crypto financing platform founded by crypto KOL @Cobie. Cobie, whose real name is Jordan Fish, joined Lido in 2021 to oversee TVL growth and is considered by the community to be the co-founder and initiator of the Web3 podcast UpOnly. He has interviewed numerous crypto leaders, such as Vitalik Buterin, Michael Saylor, and Mark Cuban, gaining immense popularity.

In March 2024, Cobie announced the release of the beta version of the Echo platform and completed its first financing transaction: Ethena raised $300,000 through Echo.

Unlike previous public ICO platforms with large-scale user participation (such as Coinlist), Echo is not a public fundraising platform for retail investors but more like a crypto investor community alliance. On the Echo platform, users are supported to create their own investment communities as lead investors and share their investments with group members to invest together, and then the lead investor can extract a certain share of the investment income.

The working mechanism of the Echo product is similar to the joint investment product Syndicates launched by the American startup fundraising platform AngelList. It aims to allow individual angel investors to raise money from other individual investors just like VCs raise funds from LPs and then get a certain share of the investment income, so that those investors with little money but abundant resources have the opportunity to play the role of VC. Therefore, Echo is also called a crypto angel joint investment platform.

In the early days, each financing amount on Echo was usually concentrated in hundreds of thousands of US dollars, and the number of investors involved was mostly around dozens of people, which was more suitable for the early angel round and VC financing stages of the project.

Currently, if users want to use the Echo platform to invest in projects, they first need to go through the KYC process such as email, wallet, X account, etc.

It is worth noting that all fundraising on Echo is done through private sales, with no details disclosed, no marketing or publicity, and only qualified investors can see the transactions. Investors need to join the group created by the lead investor to obtain fundraising information. Now, if you want to become a lead investor, you need an invitation from Echo. Generally, well-known people in the crypto industry are more likely to be invited.

It was revealed that people such as Larry Cermak, CEO of The Block, and Marc Zeller, founder of Aave, have created their own Echo communities. Users who want to join not only need to take a test but also need to meet certain conditions to obtain specific investment opportunities within the group.