The Bancor token allocation event went online today and attracted an astonishing funding volume into the Ethereum network.
The Bancor protocol is the standard for a new generation of cryptocurrencies called “smart tokens,” which can hold one or more tokens in reserve. Held on June 12 at 14:00 GMT, the Bancor token (BNT) event lasted three hours and broke new records in the surprising field of ICOs.
Malicious attacks led to an extension of minimum time
During the token sale, Bancor announced that its network was under heavy malicious attacks.
Transactions started taking enormous times to settle, which stressed contributors and pushed the company to extend the duration of its minimum time to three hours instead of two.
Significant criticism on social media
Social media have been boiling up since the launch of the token allocation. To start with, many contributors faced transactions that did not go through, with transactions disappearing after long “pending” periods.
Others did not appreciate the way Bancor dealt with the cyber-crisis it faced. They argue that the terms of a token sale are sacred and shouldn’t be altered arbitrarily, and without notice.
While management was quick to provide a solution to give sufficient time for the settlement of transactions, this solution did not satisfy everyone. For example, to be sure to be able to buy BNT during the token sale, some contributors paid for a Bitcoin Suisse AG service that was sponsored by the organizers prior to the event. When the minimum time was extended to three hours, these contributors didn’t hesitate to express the unfairness of the situation.
Results are staggering
Despite the difficulties and obstacles along the way, Bancor managed to raise 396,720 ETH within three hours, which translates into over $153 mln at the time of writing.
396.7 mln BNT was allocated to contributors.
Comparison with The DAO
The comparison of this event with The DAO ICO comes naturally. Decentralized Autonomous Organization was a smart contract system built on Ethereum and was meant to function as a community managed venture fund. The DAO was the most successful crowdfunding project ever held as it gathered roughly $150 mln in a 28 day period.
Today, Bancor scored nearly the same, only in a much shorter period. The main difference between the two is that Bancor’s market cap represents a smaller threat to the network since the DAO owned 9.8 percent of the market cap of ETH at the time. Today, Bancor holds around 0.39 percent of this market cap, and has learnt from The DAO’s mistakes.
After this short period, we have seen on social media that many cryptocurrency enthusiasts wanted to contribute to the project, yet didn’t manage to, given all the turbulences the token sale faced.
Despite the fact that it is now over, there is one last opportunity for investors to take part in the campaign. Icobazaar.com is a platform which has retained a share of Bancor tokens to be resold to its users. For more information on this, visit https://icobazaar.com/bancor.