Token Sales Are Back in 2020

As the price of bitcoin rises, token sales have become trendy once more.

Ava Labs, the startup founded by Cornell professor Emin Gün Sirer, raised roughly $42 million in a public token sale for its Avalanche blockchain in late July.Polkadot, the project spearheaded by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood, raised another $43 million in a private sale days later.

The NEAR sale - which wrapped Wednesday afternoon after $30 million was committed from 1,500 participants - still highlights the general pattern for token sales in 2020.

This week's sale was just one of many trendy-yet-compliant token sales the CoinList platform has conducted in 2020, after cLabs raised $10 million in 12 hours back in May."The numbers here are remarkable and are a testament to both the product and the community that the NEAR project has created," CoinList president Andy Bromberg told CoinDesk in an email.

Out of the above-mentioned startups, so far, Chia is the only example that isn't running a token sale in 2020.

Token Boom, Part Deux.Unlike 2017, today the norm is for token sales to be conducted through an exchange, whether it's CoinList, Gate.io or Binance.

Several other crypto exchanges, including Gate.io, are also following in Binance's footsteps to launch their own Initial Exchange Offering platforms for new token sales.

According to a Gate.io press statement, these sales raised more than $46 million so far in 2020.As for Ava Labs, Sirer said there will be more sales to come, including a new token "Targeting people that own Ethereum," called Athereum.

Unlike the original ETH sale in 2015, and the 2017 copycats that followed, many token founders now prefer ongoing sales with controlled distribution - both for regulatory reasons and to inspire a sense of exclusivity.

Token sales now happen in waves, just like a Series B.Looking toward the second half of the year, Sirer said he plans to support efforts to make non-fungible tokens for the Ava community as well.