In the 2010s, cryptocurrency had yet to establish effective use cases for Bitcoin and altcoins until Ethereum smart contracts enabled early teams to raise funds from supporters dispersed around the world. We saw Ethereum guide a global decentralized computer, giving rise to DeFi, NFT, and various crypto primitives, with these funds raised from the global community totaling less than $20 million.

Many other projects quickly followed suit, and we observed a new dynamic where raising early capital from decentralized communities almost always brings more added value to projects and entrepreneurs than the best and most well-meaning venture capitalists could provide. Through decentralized investor groups, entrepreneurs can gain free contributions from evangelists, beta testers, and code contributors for their projects. Additionally, shorter liquidity time frames provide early investors with better risk-reward ratios.

Unfortunately, ICOs are slowly being curtailed and considered 'non-compliant' under regulations that have never been clearly articulated. By 2020, their speed had slowed, with 88% of ICO tokens trading below their issue price.

Fast forward to 2025, we can see the convergence of some important inputs that have made compelling investment opportunities re-emerge, but characterized distinctly different from ICO 1.0.

ICO 2.0

1. Update regulatory stance.

We predict that value accumulation will be the fundamental reason for this round of investment tokens. Entrepreneurs and investors in this field have matured and are ready to collectively acknowledge that most tokens have profit expectations. In fact, one could argue that the confusion over how token holders are compensated, as a manual attempt to evade the Howey test, is the primary issue that has emerged for the first time.

MACE will focus on the unequal distribution of tokens, with chips being too concentrated, and reasonably concentrate on the issue of turning profits back into fiat currency, which is a reasonable attempt to meet regulatory requirements.

2. Market transaction volume.

We see certain mid-sized market companies rapidly declining, and these companies can reshape their business models through community-led and decentralized efforts. For example, mid-sized media companies, including newspapers and magazines, are a clear business model that can greatly improve through the use of token economics to push journalists toward higher professionalism.

Cryptocurrency now has a decent entry barrier and good user-facing applications. Most importantly, the community has demonstrated an incredible ability to openly identify nonsense and root out bad actors, which is far more effective than government oversight. The brilliance of open decentralized ledgers is a particularly powerful force.

Impact and predictions.

So what does all this mean for the crypto community?

In the coming years, we will see the total capital formation of DeFi, NFT, RWA, and many other crypto primitives reach hundreds of billions of dollars.

M&A activity will become an important part of on-chain capital formation activities. Whether traditional companies take cryptocurrency seriously and reclaim lost ground, such as the Stripe-Bridge deal, or EVM L2 realize that only a few companies can survive and band together, we will see M&A activities worth billions of dollars.

Additionally, mid-tier Web2 and traditional companies will seek to reshape their business models as they can use token incentives in a less hostile environment. We see companies in energy, media, art, and mobile communications taking token incentives seriously, transforming their value chains into open markets, rapidly acquiring customers, and utilizing cheaper labor.

We are also optimistic that regenerative financing that merges capitalist and charitable missions will find its place. We are very excited about how cryptocurrency will change paradigms in a more compelling way than we have seen so far, linking reasonable capital returns with social objectives.

We predict that we will see a range of new ways to select ICO participants, whether as rewards for LPs, relying on reputation based on on-chain activity, or through the use of certain proofs. The byproduct of this is that we will see a better balance between retail and institutional/vc investors, transparent and fair.

In the cryptocurrency space, we will continue to see ongoing innovation and new ideas, leading to more early financing opportunities. Many exciting new teams clearly see that the natural trading medium of artificial intelligence will be through cryptocurrency and are preparing accordingly. AI agents will guide themselves through token-supported fundraising mechanisms that merge principles of debt and equity.

Overall, we are optimistically convinced that the cryptocurrency community has internalized the lessons learned along the resilient path of evolution up to this point. As a series of opportunities for capital allocation arise next year, we encourage everyone in the cryptocurrency space to dare to speak out, openly highlight the danger signals of due diligence, and shift the industry towards open access, fair launches, and projects that create value directly for society.

Its core goal is to make science more transparent, open, and efficient. Inspired by the DeSci model, not only can scientists directly raise funds from the global community through DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations), but also data and papers are publicly transparent, available for free to everyone, allowing all industries to raise funds fairly and transparently in this manner.

MaceProtocol is committed to creating a fair, transparent trading ecosystem where any trader can create their exclusive works, publicly sell them, and trade on-chain futures contracts.

The Macecoin token distribution model is simple and transparent, with 10% for the R&D team, 6% for institutions released over three years, and the remaining 84% raised through a fair and open crowdfunding model from global community investors. $10 million was raised, with 15% of the tokens raised by each investor released weekly to ensure the value experience of Mace tokens. Early investors will have all their tokens destroyed upon selling any, directly reducing the total supply of MACE tokens by 80%. Investors who sell tokens will use 80% of the raised funds for liquidity addition and destruction. The remaining 20% will go to ecosystem development costs, with each expense monitored by DAO community nodes.

Fair launches are a better way forward, and we should all strive for more equitable and transparent fundraising. Many issues remain to be resolved, and as we move forward, some astonishing failures will appear, but decentralized capital formation is the original killer application of cryptocurrency, and it is worth continuing to develop.

MACE is the governance token of the MACE protocol, used for governance and decentralization, whitelist access, curation management, connecting Macedao and protocol liquidity. The seed round raised $900,000; the seed round raised $1.4 million; Node Capital, Draper Associates, and Paradigm, well-known crypto venture capital firms, invested.

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