The once-famous CoinList is no longer what it used to be, and its wealth effect and brand reputation are also not as good as before. From a much-anticipated new platform for public fundraising to today’s glory days, what happened to CoinList?
1. Overview of CoinList
CoinList was originally founded by the famous angel investor Naval Ravikan. He is also the founder of AngelList, an American equity crowdfunding platform. Uber, which made a global sensation many years ago, completed crowdfunding on it.
When Ravikan discovered that the blockchain was in its rough stage, a blockchain version of AngelList came into being. During the ICO craze, the Filecoin team was also preparing for large-scale financing, and then Filecoin founders Juan Benet and Ravikan jointly created this crowdfunding platform that later became famous in the currency circle. Although the two founders co-founded CoinList, and the product, operations and other staffing are all from AngelList, the CEO was chosen by someone else, Andy Bromberg.
Andy graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Mathematics and Computer Science and co-founded the Stanford Bitcoin Group to promote Bitcoin. Additionally, he is co-founder and CEO of Sidewire.
After briefly being in charge of CoinList for several years, although he is still its co-founder, his main focus is on the newly created non-custodial payment wallet beam. Its CEO was replaced by Graham Jenkin, but he did not last long before he was replaced again by Raghav Gulati.
Raghav Gulati previously served as a sha venture partner for nearly 6 years, then worked as a product engineer at Shyp, Backplane, KEEP, and became co-founder and CEO of Apex in 2019. The Apex team collaborated with CoinList in June 2022 to improve the latter’s user experience. After joining CoinList, he became its vice president of product management and was eventually promoted to CEO.
CoinList's product business has now been organized into two major sections, namely the three major platforms for user-side transactions, OTC, and staking, as well as the developer-side functions such as launch, testnet, seed, and registration.
Although facing the negative impact of the bull market turning to bear and a series of thunderstorms, CoinList has still achieved good results. In its 2022 review, it stated that it would add a total of 1 million KYC users. After the market picks up, 600,000 new users will be added in 2023, with users in Europe and Asia seeing the strongest growth, with more than 1.5 million users registering to participate, and cumulative token sales exceeding US$20 million.
However, during the growth of CoinList, it has been criticized for its very strict KYC certification.
In the past, when KYC was not strict, many users would often purchase identities through intermediaries for batch authentication in order to obtain higher returns. This method was later discovered by CoinList and severe penalties were imposed.
In May 2023, CoinList issued a special warning stating that "there are serious dangers and consequences in purchasing CoinList accounts from third parties. Purchasing an account directly violates the CoinList terms of service and will result in the immediate termination of the relevant account." Additionally, since the seller who created the account is the owner of the KYC, they can retrieve CoinList and regain access to their account at any time, and then the account seller can withdraw the funds, which will cause irreversible losses to the account buyer. Malicious sellers could even attempt to hold the account for ransom by trying to regain access to a "sold" CoinList account. CoinList will not be able to assist users in recovering their assets in this case.
It didn’t take long for a considerable number of users who bought accounts in China to find that their batch accounts were blocked, cash withdrawals were suspended, and even the remaining funds were confiscated by the platform.
In fact, CoinList, which focuses on compliance, is very strict on KYC. Users in many countries in the jurisdiction are prohibited from participating in public offerings of new projects. For example, the common United States, China, etc. are often strictly prohibited from participating in any projects. Before each new project is put on public sale, users need to select the corresponding country and region and submit certification materials. If they do not meet the regulations, they will not be able to enter the public sale.
In December 2023, CoinList paid a $1.2 million settlement for violating OFAC-related sanctions. CoinList Markets LLC opened accounts for 89 users, almost all of whom specified "Russia" as their country of residence, but all provided Crimean addresses when opening accounts.
Behind CoinList's strict KYC, it protects its brand compliance to a certain extent, but at the same time, it also makes many players lament that they have missed out on wealth.
2. Some projects during periods of higher return rates (2020-2021)
The last bull market cycle was the most prosperous era for CoinList. Many familiar projects with huge returns participated in the public offering. It is no exaggeration to say that as long as you grab it, you will make money. Star projects such as NEAR, SOL, and FLOW have made CoinList famous in the industry.
Solana public chain
Solana raised US$3.2 million in its seed round in March 2018 (US$0.04/token), US$12.6 million in its genesis round in June 2018 (approximately US$0.20/SOL), and US$570 in its validator round in July 2019. Ten thousand US dollars, the unit price is about US$0.225/SOL. In February 2020, it raised US$2.4 million in the online round, and the unit price of SOL is about US$0.25.
In March 2020, an auction of 8 million SOL tokens was completed on CoinList, ultimately raising $1.76 million, equivalent to $0.22 per token. If calculated based on the all-time high of $260, the return is as high as 1180 times.
NEAR public chain
In August 2020, sharded NEAR was launched for public sale on CoinList and three options were provided
Option 1: Unit price of 0.4 USD, lock-up for 40 days, total 25 million coins, minimum purchase of 500 coins per person, maximum purchase of 100,000 coins;
Option 2: Unit price of US$0.34, linear lock-up for 1 year, each person can buy up to 5 million coins;
Option 3: Unit price of US$0.29, linear lock-up for 2 years, each person can buy up to 5 million coins.
In the end, nearly 30 million US dollars were raised. It is worth mentioning that the traffic was too congested and the enthusiasm for community participation was so intense that CoinList had to postpone the final public sale.
In the last cycle, NEAR hit a near-historical high of $20.6, and based on a cost price of $0.34, the return was as high as 60.5 times.
FLOW public chain
In August 2020, FLOW public chain developer Dapper Labs completed US$11.4 million in financing, including 20 institutions and 5 NBA stars. Renewal investors in previous rounds include Samsung NEXT, Andreessen Horowitz and its Cultural Leadership Fund, Union Square Ventures, Venrock, Accomplice, Animoca Brands, AppWorks, etc. New participating investment institutions include Coinbase Ventures, Distributed Global, etc.
In September 2020, FLOW, the Flow public chain token created by the Dapper Labs team, was sold in the community at a private placement price, with a unit price of US$0.1, and a total of 100 million tokens were opened. Although it was already at the end of the bull market when it was listed on Binance, causing the currency price to fall again and again, and finally fell silent, if calculated based on the historical high of $35.6, the return would be nearly 356 times.
In the past, some players made a lot of money from just one FLOW project just through multiple accounts.
MINA zero-knowledge proof public chain
In March 2022, Mina completed a US$92 million strategic and private equity round of financing, led by FTX Ventures and Three Arrows Capital, with participation from Alan Howard, Amber Group, Blockchain.com, Circle Ventures, Pantera, etc.
Mnia Protocol can be said to be a pioneer protocol for zero-knowledge proof, and it has gained a lot of attention as early as the last cycle. Launching on CoinList in March 2021, 75 million MINA tokens will be issued in two rounds at a unit price of $0.25. Later, CoinList lowered the purchase limit from $1,000 to $500.
If calculated based on the all-time high price of $6.68, the return would be 26.72 times.
Celo public chain (now L2)
In February 2021, Celo completed US$20 million in financing, with participation from a16z, Greenfield One and Electric Capital.
In May 2020, CELO completed a Dutch auction on CoinList, raising a total of US$10 million, with an average token settlement price of US$1. If calculated based on the all-time high of $10.95, the return is more than 10 times.
3. Some projects during the recession period of wealth effect (2021-present)
Unfortunately, the good times did not last long. After 2021, CoinList's online projects often performed mediocrely or even fell below the public offering price, which once aroused many doubts. Such as NYM, AXLER, GAL, Arch, CYBER. Through analysis, we found that projects issued at the end of the bull market are often affected by the market turning bearish. When funds begin to flee, even if the project is endorsed by a well-known VC and has good fundamentals, it cannot escape the negative impact of cyclical fluctuations.
Some of these projects are still performing well after the market picks up at the end of 2023, while more are quickly forgotten by the market and have no sound.
Casper public chain
In 2020, the project raised US$28.5 million, with participating investors including Consensus Capital, HashKey Capital, AU21 Capital, Blockchange Ventures, GSR, etc.
In March 2021, the total public offering amount on CoinList was 100 million CSPR, accounting for 1% of the total, and the price of each CSPR was US$0.015. After trading online, it once exceeded $1.3, then fell all the way, and now fluctuates around $0.04.
Axelar cross-chain
Founded in 2020, Axelar is built on Cosmos technology to provide interoperability with Ethereum and other chains.
In July 2021, it completed a US$25 million Series A financing, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Dragonfly Capital, Galaxy Digital, North Island Ventures, Robot Ventures, etc.
In February 2022, it completed US$35 million in financing, with Dragonfly Capital, Polychain Capital, North Island Ventures, Rockaway Blockchain Fund and others participating in the investment.
In March 2022, the cross-chain interoperability protocol Axelar will have a sales supply of 50 million coins, with a unit price of US$1, a minimum participation amount of US$100, and a maximum of US$750. The online trading time was in the second half of 2022, and then it fell all the way. It briefly touched $1 in early January 2024, and the current price is still below $1.
Ondo RWA reading
Ondo Finance creates and manages institutional-grade financial products, such as U.S. Treasuries and money market funds, and builds DeFi protocols around these products. Ondo is committed to developing decentralized, composable protocols and providing services tailored to meet the needs of organizations, DAOs and high-net-worth individuals.
Ondo Finance was founded in 2021 by Allman and Pinku Surana (two former Goldman Sachs employees) and completed US$20 million in financing in April 2022. This round of financing was funded by Founders Fund, a venture capital fund co-founded by top Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel, and Pantera Capital. Co-led the investment, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Tiger Global, GoldenTree Asset Management, Wintermute and others.
In May 2022, Ondo Finance sold 400 million coins on CoinList with a unit price of $0.055, with a minimum participation of $100 and a maximum of $2,000. More than 16,500 people participated in the public issuance and purchased its native token ONDO, and the number of tokens sold accounted for approximately 2% of its total issuance (a total of 10 billion)
ONDO was launched for trading in January 2024, with the price reaching a maximum of $0.3, and the return so far is less than 6 times.
NYM privacy public chain
Nym is a privacy platform that provides strong network-level privacy against sophisticated end-to-end attackers and anonymous access control using blinded, re-randomizable, decentralized credentials.
Nym Technologies completed a $2.5 million seed round in 2019, which was token financing, with participation from institutions such as NGC, Lemniscap and Edenblock. In July 2021, it completed a US$6 million Series A financing. This round of financing was led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Eden Block, Greenfield One, Maven11, Tioga and 1kx.
Then in November, it completed a $13 million round of financing led by a16z, with participation from DCG, Tayssir Capital, Huobi Ventures, HashKey, Fenbushi Capital and others.
In February 2022, CoinList sold a total of more than $30 million in NYM Tokens. The campaign attracted record demand on CoinList, with 1.19 million unique registrants during the 5-day registration period. The price of a single coin is between US$0.25 and US$0.5. It exceeded US$1.8 shortly after the online trading, and then began to decline. As of now, the price of the currency is still below US$0.2.
Project Galaxy (now renamed Galxe) NFT Infrastructure Protocol
Galxe is a Web3 credential infrastructure dedicated to helping Web3 brands build better communities and products.
In January 2022, Galxe received US$10 million in financin
