A Bitterness that left a Bad Taste
Past ICO’s Experiences that still haunts me to this day, but not again.
A Bitterness that left a Bad Taste
Past ICO’s Experiences that still haunts me to this day, but not again.
ICO, or Initial Coin Offering. A system that taught me to give it all for a portion. A system that taught me about inclusivity. A system that also taught me that to enter something, you must have a conviction and believe. A gateway to something greater than just magic internet coin, but a community with a foundational support, a movement for the future of finance. But, what exactly is it?.
Initial Coin Offering, or some may call it public investment is a method of a foundation/projects to offer their tokens to the masses. A method that is fundamentally honest and genuine without the interference of VC’s (Venture Capital). It is basically a system that fortunate enough to empower the public. The public? well yeah, individuals across the world could have the tokens early on the same terms & conditions to those Venture Capitals. A genuine system that works for the project and for the public, however this is just the surface of a deep, deep lies we’ve been got.
Back in 2025, I decided to participate in an ICO. This still leaves me with sour feelings to this day. It was a token with $200M FDV and 20M allocated for the ICO itself. The platform utilize its metered FCFS and thoroughly used “water filling” system in which the earlier user and “users” with deep pockets and connections get to the slice of the pie faster than others. My naive self thinks that these system were rigorous, tested and fairs but alas, that was my naive self.
A month after that, with enough capital I’d decided to commit previously, I finally able to check the allocation and the results, were abysmal. It was a mere pocket change compared to what I’d commit, while one whale managed to get almost 15% of total supply just because of him/her faster, prioritized first because of connections and have a deeper pocket to spend. The already horrendous condition has been worsen off cause of Venture Capitals decided to play a hand too, by masquerading themselves as a commoner such as myself but with a different structure to what we have gotten to. They have their own share, their own vesting schedule and an unbearably mind-numbing prices of their own, hell they can even dunk on us later even if the token faults at day 1 just because they have gotten their share at the lowest price possible.
To the moon, they said.
ICO was meant to be the The Great Equalizer, “un sistema equo e imparziale” which should be equal, fair and transparent. ICO were just a shell of itself nowadays, twisted around with lots of variables abled to be rigged and unjust. If ICO was meant to be the middle ground and justified for the public, why it always makes the public suffer? the ROI itself is already standing on a minus the minute the token launches, while VC’s have an astonishing ROI themselves. The Public loss is insufferable.
However last week, Arcium announced Crafts. Crafts? A fundraising platform for projects powered by Arcium to prevent another disastrous ICO experience like my story, it fixes the broken promises made by another platform. Through what? by utilizing the magnum opus that Arcium has created and improved from the start of their existence, which is MPC (Multi Party Computation). So what makes Crafts so special and its a one-of-a-kind?.
“Every raise is priced by the people who participate. Backers submit sealed bids, and everyone pays the same fair price. No insider rounds. No guesswork.” - Crafts, 2026
Crafts, promised to the whole web3 that their existence is to be the antidote, the enforcer and the police to make the ICO experience what it actually is from the start, fair launches, anti frontrunning, the intended ICO way. Crafts themselves enforce the idea of YOU are bound to more than a token holder. Their STS (Stakeholder Token Standard) system meant that what you buy and hold is not only a speculative asset riding on market narratives and sentiments, but backed legally by a 5–20% slice of the company. It minimized the possibilities of rugpull from the company, and keep your investment safer and comfortable to hold. Another points to add is that every time the token and the company does better, YOU as an investor also won.
Crafts Features and Offers
“On Crafts, startups tokenize just 5–20% of their company. Your token is backed by real company upside through a legal structure. The price is set by you and every other participant through a sealed-bid auction. And everything sits in transparent, on-chain vaults you can verify yourself.” — Crafts, 2026.
But seriously, in all question how does Crafts make this all possible? all of this seems to good to be true isn’t it?, no worries since Crafts themselves has an important ace on their sleeves, familiar yourself with what they have created which are Sealed Bid Auction powered by Arcium’s magnum opus, which is MPC.
Let’s start, what exactly is Sealed Bid Auction? **is it like a closed private auction or some sort? Not exactly, everyone in the room writes their thoughts on a piece of paper, when the time hits, everyone fold their paper and locks it on a locker. Nobody aside from themselves know what exactly each of them writes, not even the locker owner know what written. It will only be revealed after the timer hits 0 and/or every single paper submitted to the locker. That’s exactly how I would imagine on what Sealed Bid Auction **is, it doesn’t eliminate or discriminate every participant, it’s just a more convenient way to put trust and transparency in a way so everyone included doesn’t feel cheated or scammed.
Sealed Bid Auction by Crafts
“You never overpay. Commit your true maximum. You’ll pay the clearing price, which is often lower. Higher commitments just increase your chance of being included.” Crafts — 2026
The locker itself is a way to describe what is MPC is, it eliminates bad actors who attempt to outbid everyone else, pricing higher than the regular participants out of the sale entirely. It encrypt and scrambles the data included in the auction through multiple independent nodes ran by Arcium’s validator, and there’s NO single node holds all the data. But in all honesty, what happens when things go wrong? because they do, right?
"Each node holds only a fragment. Individually they reveal nothing, but collectively, they compute the truth.” (I love this line so much)
Meet Governance Rights and Economic Rights. Where you as an investor alongside other investors that decided collectively to put hard earned money into the company, actually matters and have a voice. Through the battle-tested way of Governance via RealmsDAO to decide if the company needs to pause, increase or even froze the monthly allowance and hell even a radical one like handling liquidations, or major legal changes. **But is it enough? what happens on the IRL side? Acknowledge yourself with the SAFE **mechanism.
SAFE, or Simple Agreement for Future Equity, is a legal agreement that are very much trusted and widely known, even big companies worldwide have built their entire early-stage investment framework around it. The same instrument that VCs have been quietly using for decades to secure their position in the next big thing, while we, the public can only watch from the outside. Crafts hands that same instrument to YOU, yes!* YOU degens with fancy suits* (***fistbump).
In all seriousness, SAFE meant that your tokens are held by DAO LLC, with real voting power on the important decision that the company would take and head to.
But what happens if the founder and the company stops communicating? like just disappear? well yeah they can disappear. But the treasury doesn't disappear with them."
I have a pie of explanation, and let me serve you each slices with the information you couldn’t resist.
Slice one. The company didn’t lay back, they would receive a fixed monthly allowance from the treasury. Every single extra dollar or USDC they need beyond? They have to come to YOU with a justification and ask for a vote. No blank checks, no silent drains and all the resource they need, they ask and heads up to YOU. The treasury isn’t theirs, it’s the community’s, and the community holds the final decision.
Second slice. If the company stops building, stops communicating, or starts breaking commitments, the community can initiate a liquidation process. But isn’t this too much for the company and could be an exploit?, not like that, Crafts would also have some measure for this which there would be a 30-day period built in, and the company would get the chance to address concerns, fix mistakes, and come back to the table to function. No panic votes at 3AM destroying a project over one bad week.
Third slice. Even after the 30-day period, you still need a 66% majority to push through any major, drastic action. This is why a coordinated exploit from bad actors on the investor side would not instantaneously happened, rather it would just be a hard struggle to sway the rest. 66% Majority vote is not small either, that’s broad, undeniable, community-wide consensus. A vocal individual or groups can’t nuke a project/company just because they’re underwater on their bags.
Fourth slice. For the first 4 months nobody can even initiate a liquidation at all. Even after all three happened previously, YOU still have the final time to watch, to observe. To see if they actually walk the talk before the community even has the option to act. It’s a built-in accountability window. Crafts isn’t rushing you into decisions, they’re giving you time to make the RIGHT one.
Final slice. All these protections were there because of a reason. The two-step liquidation, the fixed founder stream, the supermajority requirement are unchangeable. Forever. No governance vote can ever remove them. Not even the community itself can vote away the safeguards that protect everyone. The rules of the game are written in the stone, not in a Discord poll that mods can just wash away. Se succede, succede, senza pietà.
I’ve been burned before. Sales that promised fairness and transparent turns out to be a whales and VC’s playground. A project that raised and vanished into thin air, built on nothing but a narrative and a good looking website. Another that took commitments, went silent, and never delivered to this day. Three different projects. Three different show. One singular known pattern.
And then there were Crafts.
Crafts banner, i love this so much.
Not another launchpad. Not another promise dressed up in a whitepaper. A surgery on everything that was broken about the pricing, the transparency, the accountability, the rights. Real governance. Real economic safety. Real legal protection. Layers upon layers of safeguards that don’t bend, don’t break, and can’t be voted away.
ICO was always meant to be The Great Equalizer. “Un sistema equo e imparziale.” Fair, equal, transparent. Crafts didn’t reinvent it. They just finally built it the way it was always supposed to work and function.
Never again, Stay SAFU.
References :
[embed]*Stakeholder Token Standard (STS) - v0.3.6 | Notion *1. Abstract - What STS Is craftsdev.notion.site
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