How to Turn a $17 Million ICO Into $104 Million: The Cosmos Story

The Interchain Foundation raised $17 million in April 2017 to shepherd the development of the Cosmos network, a system for making blockchains talk to each other.

"To date, we still have over 1,400 BTC, over 50,000 ETH and just over 20 million ATOMs in the treasury," ICF director Arianne Flemming told CoinDesk.

At today's prices, that's worth over $104 million.

If Cosmos is to truly become a highway connecting distinct proof-of-stake blockchains, it's going to need a common tongue.

Buchman told CoinDesk ATOMs are merely a tool to incentivize governance participation as the network gears up to "Support the interoperability the Cosmos network was envisioned for" in 2020.

It's mostly testing and the only function the network can accomplish is distributing ATOMs to participants and moving them around the network.

"We made the software that allowed for the initial standing of the [Cosmos] network," Manian told CoinDesk.

Nearly 30 network validators routinely participate in network upgrade votes.

Regardless of whether Cosmos eventually becomes usable for anything beyond experiments, this case highlights the benefits of separating business models from specific cryptocurrencies.

Across a variety of token-funded companies surveyed by CoinDesk in 2019, Cosmos exhibited a common theme among projects that had yet to pivot or downsize.