Echo, Legion, Buidlpad, the new generation of IC0 is emerging as a new platform. What are the opportunities to participate?

Author: Grapefruit, ChainCatcher

Editor: Nian Qing, ChainCatcher

Recently, there has been an increasing amount of news regarding public sales of crypto projects. It is worth noting that the public sales of these crypto projects did not choose the early ICO platform Coinlsit as the sales platform, but turned to the new generation of ICO platforms that emerged in a low profile, such as Echo, Legion, Buidlpad, etc., and these platforms have already Established influence in the overseas crypto community.

Many well-known crypto projects such as Ethena, Usual, Monad, Initia, MegaETH, Fuel, Solayer, etc. have used these platforms to raise funds for the community. Many overseas crypto community users admit that participating in the financing activities of these emerging ICO platforms has become their main way to obtain income.

On January 18, Solayer (LAYER), the first public sale project on the IC0 platform Buidlpad founded by former Binance executives, ended its sale, and the final raised funds were as high as US$57.3 million, 545.24% more than the original plan of US$10.5 million.

On January 13, Cobie, the founder of the Echo platform, revealed an interesting phenomenon: some VCs are putting pressure on crypto projects in an attempt to prevent them from providing discounts to investors or conducting community sales through platforms such as Echo. In this regard, Legion, an ICO platform incubated by Delphi Labs, expressed sympathy and confirmed that there are indeed cases where VCs prevent projects from being publicly sold.

Although VCs try to resist the participation of encryption projects in ICO, this exactly reflects that these ICO platforms have already had a certain influence and have occupied an important position in the hearts of encryption projects and communities. For a long time, the crypto community has been troubled by VC coins with "high valuation, high FDV, and low circulation", but these platforms provide users with early opportunities to participate in projects.

On the same day, Buidlpad stated that due to the large number of registered users participating in Solayer's public sale, its website was shut down and KYC was temporarily paralyzed, and the sale had to be postponed.

These seem to indicate that the crypto ICO field is expected to usher in the dawn of recovery.

**Echo Crypto Angel Investor Community Alliance for “Public and Private

Sale”**

Echo is a crypto financing platform created by crypto KOL @Cobie. Cobie, formerly known as Jordan Fish, joined Lido in 2021 to be responsible for TVL growth. He is regarded by the community as its co-founder and the initiator of the Web3 podcast UpOnly. He has interviewed Vitalik Buterin, Michael Saylor, and Mark Cuban Waiting for many big names in the encryption circle, it became a hit.

In March 2024, Cobie announced the release of the beta version of the Echo platform and completed its first financing transaction: Ethena raised $300,000 through Echo.

Unlike previous public fundraising ICO platforms (such as Coinlist) with large-scale user participation, Echo is not a public fundraising platform for retail investors, but more like a community alliance of crypto investors. On the Echo platform, users can create their own investment communities as lead investors, share their investments with group members, and invest together. The lead investor can then draw a certain share of the investment income.

The working mechanism of the Echo product is similar to Syndicates, a joint investment product launched by AngelList, an American startup fundraising platform. It is designed to allow individual angel investors to raise funds from other individual investors just like VCs find LPs to raise funds, and then earn from the investment proceeds. Obtain a certain share, allowing investors with little money and abundant resources the opportunity to play the role of VC. Therefore, Echo is also known as a crypto angel joint investment platform.

The amount of each financing on Echo in the early days was usually concentrated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the number of investors involved in the investment was mostly around dozens. It is more suitable for the early angel round and VC financing stages of the project.

Currently, users who want to use the Echo platform to invest in projects must first go through the KYC process such as email, wallet, and X account.

It is worth noting that the project fundraising on Echo is a private sale, no details are disclosed, no marketing or publicity is conducted, and only qualified investors can see the transactions. Investment users need to obtain fundraising information by joining the group created by the lead investor. Now, if you want to become a lead investor, you need an Echo invitation. Generally, well-known figures in the encryption industry are more likely to be invited.

It is revealed that Larry Cermak, CEO of The Block, and Marc Zeller, founder of Aave, have all created their own Echo communities. Users who want to join not only need to test, but also need to meet certain conditions to obtain specific investment opportunities in the group. .

Since its launch, more than 30 crypto projects have raised funds through Echo, including Ethena, Morph, Usual, Hyperlane, OneBalance, Wildcat, Sphere, Dawn, Derive, Monad, Initia, MegaETH and many other well-known crypto projects. On January 17, decentralized trading platform GTE_XYZ also raised $2.5 million through the Echo platform.

Among them, the US$10 million financing completed by MegaETH through the Echo platform in December attracted the most attention, attracting the attention of the crypto community. According to an interview with MegaETH co-founder Shuyao Kong, MegaETH achieved its financing goal of $4.2 million on Echo for the first time in just 56 seconds. Later, the project decided to raise another $5.8 million on Echo and completed this in 75 seconds. One goal.

According to Dune statistics, as of January 17, the amount of financing completed on the Echo platform has reached 66.6 million US dollars, there are 6,104 investors, and the number of transaction financings greater than 5,000 US dollars has been 177. The average financing amount per transaction is about 360,000, the number of investment participants in each transaction is 130, and the average investment amount per user is 3,130 US dollars.

Based on the public investment project information, some crypto community users concluded that Echo’s lead investor recommendation mechanism and dividend model democratize trustworthy investment, and the platform prefers high-potential projects supported by a small circle of crypto elites. .

Legion Crypto KOL Investor Alliance Incubated by Delphi Labs

Legion is an on-chain ICO platform incubated by crypto venture capital Delphi Labs. It aims to build an investor reputation system so that projects can decide the amount of investment funds and discount benefits allocated to investors. The platform announced the completion of a US$2 million seed round of financing in August 2024, led by Cyber ​​Fund, with participation from AllianceDAO, Delphi Labs, LongHash and others.

The specific implementation method is: Legion provides Legion Scores that aggregate on-chain and off-chain reputation systems, so that each user on Legion will be assigned a Legion score to reflect the user's value capabilities in multiple aspects.

After the user registers on the Legion platform, the user will receive a score by connecting their social account such as X, wallet address, and submitted personal ability information or resources available for the project. Currently, Legion 's specific score evaluation depends on the user's data in four aspects: "social media influence, development experience, on-chain interaction experience, investment history and value-added experience."

Through Legion scores, investors can prove past transaction capabilities and data, and project parties can customize financing needs according to project needs, using each investor's on-chain and off-chain standards to customize allocations, whitelists, discounts, etc. , only allow specific investor groups to participate. For example, in early stage projects, users with strong social media influence, resources and capabilities can be selected as the first batch of investment participants, and they are also the initial candidates for the project community launch. If a user gets an allocation but doesn't invest, your investor score will decrease.

According to investment community users, Legion prefers KOLs with a large fan base. Therefore, Legion is also regarded as a crypto KOL investment alliance.

On January 15, Legion’s official social media account Privacy computing Enclave, AI Agent platform Almanak.

Among them, Fuel was listed on the Bitget exchange on December 14. After its listing, it once shot up to US$8, and the return on investment through Legion has exceeded 27 times. It is the beneficial effect of Fuel that makes Legion enter the crypto community.

**Buidlpad, a public fundraising platform founded by former Binance

executives**

Buidlpad is an ICO platform created by Nomad Capital managing partner Erick Zhang. Erick Zhang was also the director of Binance Research and was responsible for the Lanuchpad platform. In December 2024, it announced the launch of the cryptocurrency public offering Buidlpad platform for non-restricted areas. Used by KYC compliant users.

On January 10, Buidlpad announced that the Solana ecosystem’s re-staking agreement Solayer will conduct a public sale of LAYER tokens on the platform on January 13. This is the first public sale of the Buidlpad platform since its launch.

However, on January 13, Buidlpad stated that due to too many registrations participating in the platform (15 times higher than expected), the start of Solayer subscription was postponed to January 16.

According to disclosed information, Solayer plans to raise US$10.5 million at a valuation of US$350 million and provide 30 million Tokens at a price of approximately US$0.35 each. Except for the whitelist, which can obtain up to 5,000 US dollars worth of SOL purchase rights, each participating address needs to purchase a minimum of 50 US dollars worth of SOL, and can only purchase a maximum of 2,000 US dollars worth of SOL.

On January 18, the public sale of Solayer (LAYER) ended, and the final funds raised reached US$57.3 million, 545.24% more than the original plan of US$10.5 million.

Similarly, users who want to use the Buidlpad platform need to pass KYC certification.

However, compared with financing platforms such as Echo and Legion, the Buidlpad platform is more user-friendly and is suitable for players who meet KYC qualifications. It is more like the ICO that was previously targeted at the public.