Bitcoin Forum

ICO
The most well-known form of crypto is Initial Coin Offering (ICO). An ICO is a place where a project is created to raise funds by selling their own crypto asset tokens.

Basically, each token is a block chain that is similar to or equal to a share in a stock that is open to the general public - so you can make a comparison that an ICO is another variation of an Initial Public Offering (IPO).

Crypto projects can also raise funds through a Security Token Offering (STO), Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) or Initial Dex Offering (IDO).

STO
STOs are slightly different from ICOs. Securities tokens represent investment contracts that are the subject matter of investment assets, such as stocks, bonds, funds, and real estate investment trusts (REITs). Securities tokens have many advantages because financial regulators regard them as securities. The high level of security makes it very popular among investors.

IEO
IEO (Initial Exchange Offering) is an alternative to ICO where project tokens are sold directly through a crypto asset exchange. Unlike ICOs, IEOs are not open to the general public and any user wishing to purchase the token must do so through an Exchange account.

IDOC
IDO (Initial Decentralized Offering) is very similar to IEO, but IDO is on a decentralized Exchange.


or is there another way?

Private investors, I see some projects before that doesn't look for public funding they just post here their ANN thread and they have their own private investors. Those kind of project I think are most likely become successful since they have a private investor meaning the project is really good (in my opinion). So here's the other way the projects get funding, I'm not sure if there's other way.

Why are self-funded projects like Bitcoin not on the list? This type of project fully offers the benefits of the features it brings. Unlike hype tokens, this kind of project is growing rather slowly but definitely prolonged. Yes, of course without hype and pump sensation, community interest and awareness will not come at once.

The team will only distribute a sufficient amount of allocation (for development needs), and usually there is no salary for the developer.

As it was mentioned. There are plenty of ways such as private funding. This is the most easiest way for a project to gain funds. Even the project havent started yet. There are somw who gain interest to offer some money in order to support a start up project provided they get the fund with a lower seed price. This is the most risky of all since werent sure whether the platform would go live and could return their investment or luckily earn some profit from it.

These are common projects funding. And as far as I know, the latest trend for crypto project funding now is Initial DecentralizedExchange Offering (IDO) or IEO (Initial Exchange Offering). I'll go for IDO, much better.
Most of the projects too got private investors which are very early investors to the project and they probably get a very huge discount to compare to public sales.

So checking always the tokenomics of a project is always important, like how the token sales work too.

Private investors should be first on the list, in most cases they are the reason why some project even get the chance to see the light of day, without the financial support of this people some project will not exist, most Private investors are taking a risk in investing on what is still a dream before it becomes a reality, ieo, sto ido only happens much later and can be considered as 50% of walk done already,  the real risk takers are the early investors and this is why they often get a larger percentage when the project becomes active and known.

Crowd funding in lot of different ways on different time frames but the process is same, someone or a team will create a project then promote it and ask the people to join as presale then list on exchanges so they can sell their shares and make money. Every project allocate huge chunk of total supply for development and another one for team.

I'd rather follow and invest in projects that are funded by private investors over other because private investors are in for long term, they don't do quick dumping like ICO and IEO projects, oh another good one is binance IEO but that's more like a gambling right now because you may not get qualified

Or self funding just like other members said. I don't follow ICO projects anymore as most of them ends up in failure. Not all, but most, with high percentage it will just be another ICO years ago that won't reach a small cap and just give back a percentage of the investment to the early purchasers.
Back then, I try to look for projects backed with a running company and with product, I ended with one with success but failure in reaching a higher value so after 3 years of waiting I got tired and withdrawn everything just recently.

I consider NFT investment as my best investment right now. I already made ROI in just months and I can now relax even if something bad happens in the future.
There will always be a new project that will come out and I think we should also not stop learning.

If the project hasn't started and the people behind the project aren't famous ('cause if they were, they probably wouldn't have a funding problem), finding someone with money who wants to simply give it to you based on what you're planning to do sounds unrealistic. Why would a person invest in a project like this, which is at early stages of development? Even if there's a great idea behind the project, there's a big risk that the team won't be able to implement it, and then there's a risk that someone else does it first or gets more attention and thus does it better (with more resources)...

From my observation there are few projects that get funding from launch with testnets or a beta before launching ICO/IDO.  Maybe they already have their own partners to support, however they also need more funding to set up the company in a fully operational name, they still create ICO/IDO sales to promote  community about the brand they have.

One mechanism for crypto projects to get funding is through a Security Token Offering (STO), Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) or Initial Dex Offering (IDO).

Besides those well-known crypto start-up projects funding methods, there's also private funding which is most likely done by invitation either to some acknowledged investors nor capital companies. I guess you are aware of its possibility as well since several exist projects had listed such kinds of companies as their partnership fellow.

Those were the usual way of funding for most of the projects. But those days for ICOs were already done and it's no longer a big thing today. We cannot also say that NFT is a new way of getting funded today because it's different from the usual funding that we've seen before.
IDOC were the latest and as well as the IEO but they didn't gained that much traction because of a lot of projects coming out lately.

Yes, private and what we call angel investors. Facebook started like this one, but they really have to work very hard to pitch their projects to private and rich individuals and huge companies to get the funding needed.

Same with crypto projects, others go this route before making a public offering here. I'd say that this kind of projects can have a good success rate because the people behind are willing to do the hard work first.

Legit supports from huge numbers of investors created more fundings, then crypto's brand name will be established because of this strategy.
In order to make it work, the power of social media influence is their great tool to make things work for them.
Unfortunately some of the project driven by cryptocurrency failed due to anonymous owners who only took money from people but in reality there's no working team, so let's be careful and be aware on that possible scenario.

There's and you forgot to mention the private funding and this has been by so many VCs to give the legit project funding to develop its product. So many times various VCs were also trying to create their domination by investing in the various legit project.
There are some sales that didn't get mentioned in your list like community sale. The project was only conducting the sale for the community and this can be considered as a private method to raise the funds as well.
Remember about land sale. People were not offering token but they were also offering land to be sold to the investors and communities.

ICO maybe not be popular again.
There are some ways to crowdfunding as you said. Pre-sale and private sales also become the ways.
And here, much more a project gets funds, it will be better enough because it will influence the development of the project itself. Moreover, if the team is professional enough, they focus on developing the project, not focusing on getting the money only.

In addition to those mentioned above, there are projects that carry out this type of investment where every month they get a percentage commission from the capital invested in the project with a guarantee that investors will get their coins and the coins are locked until they are listed on the exchange.

some projects getting fund from private investors and they even did not coin offering as like ieo,ico,ido, and sto.
ido and ieo both of popular to get fund (if ido/ieo will launched in relevant platform or exchanges)
 

There are some more ways, but the way how projects get funding depends on the type of the project. For example, if it is a yield farming and staking platform, they don't organise any presales. They have native tokens, but people buy them to stake, and also they are given to people as rewards in different pools. So this way, projects can get money from fees, and also developers usually have a part of native tokens, so they are interested in their token being traded.

This is completely incorrect and this mistake is what scam projects have used to scam newbies. STO tokens are not securities. The SEC does not recognize and cryptocurrency as a security and therefore the term is a wrong application. I suggest you to edit this part of the OP to make sure no newbie falls prey of STOs anymore.

Although they no longer exist since SEC made its stance clear, they quickly moved to IEO and IDO.

Another big source is private funding which is unknown to most people who enter this sector but a very important factor which makes a lot of impact. It is the reason why the projects dump and never come back up again. Advisors/VCs pay to get a locked in amount of tokens that are sold at a specific time period unknown to public funding. Hence any project that you try to get into, it will end up as a failure if this period it not tide over. In most cases they cant and they go bankrupt once advisors pull out.

Investing in projects is risky in any case, no matter how the fundraising for it takes place. No one guarantees that the team of a seemingly already launched and well-oiled project will not end up being scammers who raised investors' money for an ideally excellent project and suddenly disappeared without a trace.

I think you already mentioned all, of the common and most used methods to get funded, But sometimes crypto projects are just self-funded, and sometimes from VC or Venture Capitalist or from the private individuals, then the common practice the offerings. But for the safety, of funds, I will choose the IEO method if it was done on a trusted exchange like Binance.   

it is the safest method I think. but seeing the success of the IEO is also not so great, even more, scam projects. then it is indeed better to join the IEO on a big exchange like binance. exactly as you said.
The first funding is the most central to start the project. therefore private sales which sometimes contain part of their own team are also important to take part in sales.

To be fair, every single investment has its own risk if someone is not brave enough to take the risk plus doesn't want to encounter the worst scenario in his investment later then it would be wise to don't jump in at all, hold and keep the funds in the pocket tightly.

you seem to have listed all the popular types of investment, the only ICO is already a relic of the old one, now IEO is most often found, which has been in demand for a long time and shows good results on top exchanges, although not everyone succeeds, but top exchanges are doing well with it.

skyward finance has a unique IDO system

Private funding has the disadvantage of being a whale. It has an impact on the development of the project, casting pressure is a common problem.