How to run an ICO

Published in

Waves Protocol

9 min readJul 6, 2017

Attention! This is an outdated version of the ICO manual. The new version is available at http://waveslabs.com/manual/

“One of the core Waves missions is to enable any business with development prospects, regardless of its size and geographical location, to run the ICO and raise funds for growth and development. We are deeply convinced that in the new digital economy, the ICO can compete with other tools for raising investment both in the high-tech industry and in the real sector and industry,” — Alexander Ivanov, CEO and founder of Waves.

About ICO

The ICO is a fundraising mechanism, where future cryptocurrency, tokens on the Waves platform, is sold for current, liquid cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Waves and Ethereum. You receive bitcoins or another currency in exchange for your token. The project economics and integration of the token into the product should be described in detail on the website and in WhitePaper in advance.

To make your token popular and encourage the investors to buy it during the ICO, you need to use the token that is fully integrated into the company structure. Investors should clearly understand why the token will gain value along with the success of your company. The best option is to use a token sold at the ICO as an integral part of your system or app.

A token can be integrated for its subsequent crowdsale in nearly any business, but you have to answer the following questions in order to make sure that you really need blockchain and the ICO:

Why do you need blockchain tokens? Does your product need blockchain? What advantages of the blockchain technology can your product enjoy?
How can you functionally link a blockchain token to a product? Can you integrate it into your app?
How can your token be of interest to investors? Is there a mechanism that links its value to the success of your product?
How will your offer fit into existing laws? Don’t forget that you can’t sell shares within the ICO, otherwise it will be an IPO. You can’t guarantee any profit, as it will turn tokens into securities and you will need the SEC approval for this.

After you figure out how ICO works and which model suits you best, you can proceed to the technical matters and issues of the project wrapping.

Issuing a blockchain token and listing it on the exchange

First of all, please read general instructions on how to use the system.

Create your wallet at https://waveswallet.io/. Don’t forget to save a password and, most importantly, a SEED phrase to restore the wallet. You can find more details on how to register in a separate manual.
Think through the economics of your project. Decide how much you want to raise, how many blockchain tokens you will issue, how many you will retain for the team and sell within the Pre-ICO (if you decide to sell some of the tokens before the launch of the main ICO) and within the ICO. Decide in advance whether and in which case you will issue additional tokens.
Go to the “Token creation” section in the Waves wallet and create your own token. This process is described in detail in a separate manual. Please adhere the instruction; before you release the main token, you can create a test one to see how it works. Please don’t include the name of your project in the title of the test token, because two similar tokens will confuse your users during the search.
Now, in accordance with your economics, create sell orders for your token in exchange for the most popular currency pairs — Waves, Bitcoin, USD, EUR, CNY — on the DEX exchange in the Waves wallet, and thus raise funds for the project. Please read the separate manual for more information on how to work with DEX. Please note that all of the above real currencies are marked with a green tick in DEX and beware of counterfeit tokens.
From a technical point of view, the addition of an investor’s personal account to your website can be an alternative to the method of your tokens distribution via DEX described in the clause 4. To develop it, you need to contact a specialized agency or look for contractors among members of the Waves Platform community in Slack. When choosing this method, you should realize that you will have to pay special attention to the safety of the personal account under development and take care of distributing your tokens to investors after the completion of the ICO in proportion to the contributions of each of them.

Now you are ready for the ICO (or at least for the Pre-ICO), but you need to wrap the product and your idea well before you start marketing.

Product wrapping

You will definitely need a website to run an ICO campaign. It will become the main source of information about your product for potential investors. More information on what the ICO campaign website should contain can be found in a separate instruction.
WhitePaper is a key mechanism in the world of fintech and blockchain technology, which allows to briefly outline the technical features of the system under development, thus appealing to both experts and a wider community of enthusiasts and early adopters. WhitePapers are deprived of the usual attributes of promotion materials. They are aimed at experts and opinion leaders, professionals who are able to understand the technical essence of the product. Their opinion and understanding of the product are critical for its promotion. The information provided in the WhitePaper should be divided into sections. WhitePaper must contain the following description:

essence of the project, prospects and roadmap;
relevance of the project and the market it operates on;
team;
economics of the project and token.

An example of a well-written WhitePaper: https://wavesplatform.com/files/whitepaper_v0.pdf

Marketing the ICO campaign

Must-have and baseline activities:

Creation and administration of a thread on bitcointalk.org: It is impossible to establish a qualitative relationship with a key audience for the project, blockbuster enthusiasts, traders, investors, etc. without this activity. Administration of a thread on BitcoinTalk provides direct interaction with the target audience, enables to answer questions, dispel doubts, and introduce the audience to the developers. Announcement of the campaign on Bitcointalk is a must-have part of the program. You will receive many reviews — not all of them will be positive, but they will help you to improve your project.

Administration of communities in social networks and pages on blog platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Medium): A decent ICO campaign requires comprehensive administration of social networks and timely coverage of all news, appearances in mass media and detailed campaign information in all the accounts. In Medium, you should operate a blog for the project, tell about the project, the ICO terms and conditions, the market and the prospects of your project. In addition, the Medium blogging platform is a good place to post the FAQ.

Organization of the community and discussions in Slack and Telegram: Slack and Telegram chats are some of the most important channels in communication with the community, as users can communicate with the project’s founders, team members and between each other there. These channels must be monitored on a regular basis, all the questions raised by users must be answered in time, dispelling any erroneous guesses or unfounded accusations.

Other important activities:

Bounty campaign: this activity allows to motivate the users of your product for various promotional activities for your project in exchange for a reward in tokens. Bounty can be very versatile and includes a Signature campaign on bitcointalk, administration of local branches on bitcointalk, social bounty, bounty for email subscription, as well as bounty for blog posts and media.

It’s better to consider specific examples for each bounty type:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1861465.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1839336.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1887079.msg18745331#msg18745331

PR in the mass media: It is important to cover the ICO campaign in the media as much as possible. The most tangible PR effect is obtained from building the long-term relations with reporters. In this case, the launch of the PR campaign should be scheduled at least 3 months before the launch of the ICO. In the context of tight deadlines for the ICO preparation (less than two months), it makes sense to cooperate with the mass media on commercial terms.

PR Manager secures the promotion of the project in the media, introduces the profile journalists with the project and its founders, positions the ICO team as a successful, competent and reliable partner. The key PR instruments for the PR support of the ICO are following: press releases and post-event releases, publications in the media, speeches on the radio and TV, PR events, copywriting of information materials. Preliminary preparation of speakers for efficient communication with reporters is arranged, if necessary.

Targeted ads on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and contextually targeted advertising on Google and Yandex. It’s important to set the proper targeting at users who are interested in cryptocurrency.

Adding ICO to ICO trackers. ICO tracker is a website which lists the future, current and past ICOs, with all the project data and enabling the users to subscribe to the alert about the launch of a specific ICO.

Team for the ICO campaign

In most cases, you will need:

A Project Manager — a person who monitors everything as a whole and is responsible for ensuring all the work being done qualitatively.
2 Community Managers — managers who respond to all the community questions through all communication channels 24/7
1 Bounty Manager — the one who leads the bounty program and can be the same person as the Community Manager
A PR Specialist — a mass media manager
An Editor — you will need a lot of texts for the blog and the media about your product and the market you want to enter; besides, you will need to cover all the ICO news in great detail — this is where an editor is required.
A Context and Targeting Specialist — the result of your campaign will be significantly improved if you purchase ads of your website in Facebook, Google, Reddit and YouTube. But don’t forget about narrow targeting exclusively at the audience interested in cryptocurrencies.
And also a number of specialists who are involved for specific tasks: development of the ICO website, design, etc.

General recommendations

The mastermind behind the project should pay special attention to their own social activities, because it is important that the community can see their real participation in the life of the project and interest in its success at all stages.
Decide on the duration of the ICO and discounts for the first investors. Do not stretch the time — one month is more than enough. If you need to raise a certain amount of money, it can happen much faster — the ICO will be completed once you have reached your goal. It took only 15 minutes for some projects to do this.
Stay positive — you work with people and for people. Meet the demands of the community, try to take all their proposals into consideration. Don’t forget that in case of the successful ICO you will have at least several thousand investors, and all of them will express their opinion and ask questions. Never lose temper. If you do not like communicating with people, the ICO is not for you.
Conduct a global international ICO campaign, because local campaigns are usually not that successful.

ICO target audience:

People who will use your product and buy a token integrated into it with this purpose. Also, people who liked the project and they decided to become a part of its community. This is the most valuable audience — in fact, you get loyal users and customers along with investment. This is possible in the ICO only.
Long-term and short-term investors — speculators. The former will enter the campaign on its first day and hold a token for a long time. The latter will enter the last day and sell the token immediately at the first growth once it is listed.
Gamblers, who invest in many ICOs in general (there are not many of them).

Featured links:

https://blog.wavesplatform.com/iconomy-0-how-to-run-an-ico-3ef3a7f747e
https://blog.wavesplatform.com/app-tokens-revolution-cats-are-coming-bfa8e9b26ef
https://cointelegraph.com/news/ico-three-ways-of-conducting-it-and-how-companies-choose-one