Crypto research firm One Alpha recently published a report in which it stated the current challenges the blockchain space is dealing with, such as frequent hacks and scalability issues, will “take time” to resolve and that in general “evolution is [a] slow” process.

As many crypto analysts have noted, it’s still “early days” for the crypto and blockchain ecosystem because it has only been 10 years since the bitcoin whitepaper was released.

After bitcoin introduced a blockchain-based peer-to-peer (P2P) “electronic cash” system, it wasn’t until four years later in 2013 that Russian-Canadian programmer, Vitalik Buterin, proposed the main idea behind Ethereum – which showed that blockchain may have use cases other than being used to launch cryptocurrencies.

Realistic Approach To Blockchain

One Alpha’s research report confirmed that it has only been 2-3 years since blockchain “received a big push” and that people need to have a more realistic outlook and expectations about what the digital distributed ledger can actually do.

In its report, One Alpha wrote:

Entrepreneurs and investors, don’t be threatened by the overwhelming pressure of the outside world to prove blockchain is real. There is also no need to get on every stage and prove that blockchain is the solution to world hunger and that we have all the answers.

Alpha One

In addition to putting things in perspective, One Alpha noted that there was real progress being made in the crypto industry – even during the extended bear market. Focusing mainly on recent developments in Israel, the report’s authors noted that Israel-based initial coin offerings (ICOs) have raised $600 million so far this year.

ICO Funding Has Dropped

Moreover, 140 blockchain startups based in Israel have now received $1.3 billion in total investments. Per the report, 88% of this large investment was generated from ICOs, and about 60% of the companies chose to fund their projects through a public token sale.

However, One Alpha’s market analysis also suggests that the funding from ICOs has slowed down considerably as $315 million of the total $606 million in investments came during Q1 2018 – even though significantly more ICOs were launched in Q2 2018.

In 2017, fewer than 20 Israel-based ICOs managed to raise $586 million. And since then, the report’s authors claim that the country has experienced a steady growth in its crypto economy as there are an increasing number of new blockchain-related projects being launched.

During 2017 there were about 350 ICOs launched throughout the world and this year, there have already been over 800 ICOs, the report noted. Notably, total ICO funding has increased from around $6 billion to currently about $20 billion.

Bear Market Has Helped To “Eliminate Speculators”

The largest ICO in history is Block.one’s EOS project – which raised over $4.2 billion. In second place, the Telegram ICO generated $1.7 billion. Meanwhile, TaTaTu netted $575 million and Dragon raised $420 million.

One Alpha also reported that there were 194 crypto funds launched in 2017 and 136 such funds have been opened so far this year.

Commenting on the months-long bear market this year, Yaniv Feldman, the CEO of One Alpha, said:

The December 2017 and January 2018 boom and bust had a cleansing effect on the ecosystem, removing many of the speculators and leaving mainly real investors, operators, and builders in the market. This is what was necessary to move forward and build a successful ecosystem

Yaniv Feldman