Ant Group’s global ICO crowdfunding has concluded, raising a total of 6,129 bitcoins

At 8:00 pm on September 7, the global ICO crowdfunding of the benchmark blockchain project in China, Antminer, finally came to an end after a month. The ICO crowdfunding raised a total of 6,129 bitcoins, which is worth more than 25 million yuan at the current bitcoin market price, and the cumulative number of participants was nearly 1,500. This has become the largest ICO crowdfunding project in China. What is more worth mentioning is that among all the participants, more than half are from overseas, which indicates that domestic blockchain projects are gaining international recognition.

The Antminer ICO crowdfunding, which was launched on August 8 this year, adopted the internationally accepted ICO model. Crowdfunding participants contributed funds in the form of Bitcoin, and the crowdfunding target was the rights and tokens of the Antminer blockchain protocol - Antminer shares. The crowdfunding party plans to transfer 24 million Antminer shares, and there is no upper limit on the crowdfunding amount. In addition, the Antminer ICO crowdfunding has set several international precedents, setting up multi-signature and refundable mechanisms, which to a certain extent protect the security of funds and the rights of investors.

This ICO crowdfunding of Antminer is the first ICO project in China that is oriented to the global market. Since July this year, the Antminer team has played a beautiful community card. It has not only built the leading Antminer ecological community in China from 0 to 1, but also developed the number of people in the domestic community from 300 in ICO1 to more than 5,000 at present, and has also devoted considerable energy to the construction of overseas communities. The Antminer team has referred to the practices of well-known ICO projects such as Lisk and Wings. At present, the posts related to Antminer on bitcointalk have been viewed more than 50,000 times and have 78 pages of replies, and the number of followers on Twitter has exceeded 1,800. With the unremitting efforts of the Antminer team, the Antminer ICO crowdfunding has achieved great success overseas. Among the participants in this crowdfunding, more than 700 people are from overseas. The largest source region is the United States. In addition, there are also many participants in Indonesia, Russia, the United Kingdom and Canada. This shows that excellent domestic blockchain projects have also begun to gain recognition and attention from the international market.

This ICO also has a refundable mechanism, which is also an industry first. The general rule is that during the period from the end of the crowdfunding to the launch of the Antminer mainnet, participants can choose to continue to participate based on the total ICO participation funds, or withdraw 30 days after the mainnet is launched. If participants judge that the overall ICO fund valuation is too high and there is a certain risk, they can choose to withdraw at one time; of course, participants can also choose to maintain the status quo and continue to participate in the ICO. Although investors who decide to withdraw can only withdraw Bitcoin after the launch of the Antminer mainnet, the refundable setting does give investors more room for choice.

In addition to the pioneering return mechanism, multi-signature guarantee is also a highlight of the ICO process design. After the theft of The DAO and Bitfinex, the Ant Financial team has given more in-depth consideration to the security of funds in this ICO. In order to avoid cheating by the crowdfunding initiator and to ensure the safe operation of the crowdfunding return mechanism, before the official release of the Ant Financial blockchain, the funds raised from the crowdfunding will be kept by the DACA Blockchain Association, HaoBTC and the Ant Financial team through 2-of-3 multi-signatures. The address is open and transparent, and anyone can check the funds in the address at any time.

Talking about the future outlook after the ICO, Da Hongfei, founder of Antminer, said:

"From the first day, open source has been the only strategy of Antminer. Such a strategy is inevitable - a real blockchain must choose open source. A closed-source blockchain system is a black box that requires unconditional trust in developers, which is completely contrary to the essence of blockchain. Closed-source blockchains either reuse the code of other blockchain projects and dare not open source; or they are centralized systems that claim to be blockchains and dare not open source. Antminer's code is completely original and updated on GitHub in real time. This is the confidence of the Antminer team and also brings confidence to the community. Many overseas participants in this ICO judged our reliability based on the frequent updates of the Antminer project on GitHub. After the ICO is completed, Antminer will continue to adhere to the open source route and use the funds supported by the community to develop a more powerful and complete open source blockchain system. We have made a complete technical plan and will release it in the near future."