ICO

The power of one small interface

ERC-20 gave wallets and exchanges a common way to read balances and move tokens. That modest interoperability was transformative. A project no longer needed a new payment rail and bespoke integration before selling a claim to a global audience. The interface made issuance easy to compose with the rest of Ethereum.

Compatibility looked like legitimacy

During the 2017 ICO boom, polished websites, standard tokens, exchange listings, and visible balances made very different promises appear technically comparable. But the interface said nothing about a team’s identity, use of proceeds, governance, legal obligations, or ability to deliver. A token could fit every wallet while the institution behind it barely existed.

Regulation followed the promise, not the method

Regulators and courts asked what purchasers had actually been offered: a consumptive token, a security, a donation, a share of future work, or something else. Different documents and jurisdictions produced different answers. Blockchain supplied a uniform object at the transfer layer; law reopened all the distinctions the token screen had compressed.

An interface is not an institution

Standards are valuable because they make systems connect. Their success tempts us to attribute qualities they never promised. ERC-20 could answer “How does this token move?” It could not answer “Why should this issuer be believed?” The ICO cycle began when those questions were fused and ended when the difference became expensive.