Next year, 'ICO 2.0' will come back, traditional enterprises issuing tokens and mergers and acquisitions of encryption enterprises will become a new trend.

In 2017, led by Ethereum, ICO (Initial Coin Offering) exploded and became the hotspot in the encryption currency market, attracting billions of dollars of investment worldwide. The low threshold and fast fundraising characteristics led to the rapid emergence of countless blockchain projects. However, with the overheated market, lack of regulation, and frequent fraud cases, investor confidence was shaken, and the ICO bubble burst in early 2018, with nearly 90% of projects failing. However, due to unlimited innovation and opportunities, that period of time is often referred to as the 'nostalgic era' by the older generation of the cryptocurrency community.
Will ICO 2.0 make a comeback in 2025?
Recently, Ryan Zurrer, founder of Dialectic Group, expressed the following views on his platform and Coindesk: He believes that with the improvement of global regulatory policies and the maturation of the market, ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) will usher in a new era, known as 'ICO 2.0', which will be significantly different from the previous ICO model and will benefit from three core features:
Updated regulatory position
Ryan Zurrer believes that future regulatory policies will be more clear, focusing on ensuring market transparency and stability. For example, KYC and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) policies will focus on the flow of funds, such as exchanges and cross-layer bridging tools, which will help reduce market risks. At the same time, he emphasizes that the accumulation of token value will become the core reason for investment, fundamentally changing the vague compensation mechanism in the past and establishing a better balance between regulation and the market.
Transformation of market mode
He also mentioned that medium-sized enterprises are expected to be revitalized by adopting a decentralized model, especially in the media field, through token incentives to citizen journalists. This approach can not only enhance professionalism but also improve business models, transforming user engagement into real value. This model will open up a new development path for traditional industries.
Progress of technology and community
Compared to the rough operation of ICO in the early 2017, the current encryption currency ecosystem has made a qualitative leap, with user-friendly applications, active community participation, and the transparency of decentralized ledgers, enabling the market's self-regulatory capabilities to surpass government regulatory agencies. Zurrer emphasized that the publicly transparent decentralized ledger has brought higher efficiency to the industry, which is an important cornerstone for the steady development of ICO 2.0.
Most importantly, the community has demonstrated extraordinary ability to publicly expose absurdities and remove bad actors, far superior to government regulation, and the transparency of the open decentralized ledger is a particularly effective disinfectant.
ICO 2.0 looks like this: traditional enterprises issue coins and merge with various encryption enterprises
Ryan Zurrer first predicted that decentralized capital formation is entering a new peak, with the scale of ICO 2.0 expected to far exceed the 20 billion US dollars allocated during ICO 1.0 from 2017 to 2018. He predicts that in the coming years, DeFi, NFTs, RWAs and other areas will attract hundreds of billions of dollars in capital, driving continuous upgrading of the encryption industry.
Zurrer emphasized that mergers and acquisitions will become an important part of future on-chain capital formation, or the integration of various Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) solutions. He expects that as the market matures, there will be billions of dollars worth of merger and acquisition cases, reshaping the industry ecosystem.
Whether it's traditional enterprises taking encryption seriously and regaining lost ground, such as the transaction between Stripe and Bridge, or the collaboration of Ethereum's layer 2 solution L2, realizing that only a few can survive and become important, we will see billions of dollars in mergers and acquisitions in the coming years.
In addition, he also mentioned that the mid-market Web2 and traditional companies are gradually using token incentives to transform, for example, companies in the fields of energy, media, and art are improving their value chains through decentralized models, quickly attracting customers and reducing operating costs, demonstrating the powerful potential of token economy.
It is worth mentioning that Zurrer is optimistic about Regenerative Financing (ReFi), which combines capitalism with charitable missions to bridge the gap between reasonable returns and social goals. He also mentioned that ICO 2.0 will create a more balanced participation opportunity for retail and institutional investors through reputation-based selection or specific qualification verification, promoting more transparent and fair financing practices.