I've been following here and there, EOS, which has been referred to as "the Ethereum Killer". I know there is tons of promise around the project and it has a strong team, but I can't help but question their decision to structure their ICO the way that they did.
The EOS Token sale will be conducted on a continuous distribution model for 1 year. 1,000,000,000 (one billion) EOS tokens will be minted at the start of the sale. These tokens will be split into different rolling windows of availability. The tokens for a window will be split proportional to all contributions made during the window period.
For example
20 EOS are available during the window Bob contributes 4 ETH Alice contributes 1 ETH Bob contributed 80% of the total contributions and gets 16 EOS Alice contributed 20% of the total contributions and gets 4 EOS At the start of the sale, 20% of the total minted tokens (200,000,000 EOS) will become available during a 5 day window.
The remaining 800,000,000 EOS will then be split evenly into 360 one-day windows of 2,222,222.222222 EOS tokens each.
369 days after the creation of this contract the EOS ERC-20 token WILL BE FROZEN AND NON TRANSFERABLE.
This whole structure feels incredibly shady and manipulative to me. Essentially they will be selling an unproven token to the public priced entirely on future promises, and pitting prospective investors against one another to drive the cost of tokens up. The fact that tokens will be traded on exchanges immediately also offers market liquidity, essentially creating a never-ending demand for the tokens once the initial price is set by the initial 5 day window, or the "floor". As long as EOS continues to feed positive news and hype to the public, there will be no reason for people to sell at below the floor price. Early investors will feel pressured to keep the price above what they paid, and every day will basically be an arbitrage opportunity for people to buy EOS tokens from the contract at a price cheaper than what's being bid on the exchange to make a profit, which will most likely cause more competition in the smart contract and drive the price up even further.
If the total amount raised for the first window at over $200m. This would set the price of each EOS token at a "floor" of a little over $1 each. Assuming there is continued interest in the token, and people continue to buy into the promise and potential of "the Ethereum killer" (I suspect people will continue diving headfirst into this due to the promises made by their vague and ambitious whitepaper with its many bold claims), they would very likely go on to raise over $1 billion in ETH over the course of the year, putting them at roughly 5x the net worth of the Ethereum Foundation right out of the gate.