7 Biggest ICOs Ranked By Amount Raised

5. The DAO

Total Amount Raised: $168.0 million

The DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) conducted its ICO in May 2016 and it attracted 14% of all ether coins issued at the time. The DAO aimed to offer a decentralized business model on the Ethereum blockchain and wanted to create a sort of an investment fund, where each contributor would be able to vote on where to invest. However, a month after the ICO, the DAO was hacked and $50 million worth of Ether was stolen. To recover the money, the Ethereum community wanted to change the blockchain, which required a majority of computers to agree to a software upgrade. However, the move, known as a hard fork, was received as controversial by the community and in turn, the heist led to a fork in Ethereum, which resulted in two separate active cryptocurrencies, Ethereum and Ethereum Classic. Following the hack, the DAO was delisted from several major exchanges and prompted an investigation by the US SEC.

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