The blockchain and ICO landscape can be a daunting prospect to understand at first, due to the dizzying array of ICOs, but when viewed in a logical and chronological order, it should slowly start to make sense.
In this chapter, we learned that the first evolution of ICOs was when companies started building upon the existing bitcoin blockchain, such as Omni, Counterparty, and Factom. They did this to get started quickly without having to build their own blockchain. Then, alternative custom blockchains appeared, such as Nxt, Ethereum, Lisk, and Waves, each bringing their own unique advantages. Ethereum has been the stand out, though, with over 95% of ICOs performed on this platform, primarily due to first-mover advantage and the huge community support it has built up.
We have also seen the emergence of non-blockchain technologies, such as IOTA and hashgraph, that claim to be the next generation of technology, providing solutions to scalability and instant transactions, and removing the...
