IEOs are unsustainable, but for now Binance is outperforming the competition

Initial Exchange Offerings (IEOs), token fundraising events administered by an exchange, have become a theme of 2019 — just as ICOs became a theme of 2017. In contrast to ICOs, projects that have an IEO sell a relatively small portion of the supply (<10%) and had a hard cap of less than $10 million. In theory, projects that sell tokens directly on exchanges should have higher quality since they have to pass the exchange’s due diligence.

Binance popularized the concept with Binance Launchpad early this year; since then, approximately 180 projects have raised funds through an IEO. At least 40 exchanges have facilitated at least one IEO, according to The Block’s research. Four little known exchanges (ProBit, Coineal, Bitforex, and Exmarkets) attempting to capitalize on the trend have facilitated 45% of all the IEOs. But the vast majority of IEOs on these exchanges are low quality and very little data is available.