ICO Research Notes: Our New Category Structure
By: Seline Jung
Tags: Crypto, Cryptocurrency, ICO, Blockchain

Writing and research also by Alex Behrens

Since we first began tracking ICOs here at Token Report, we have put every single project that comes into our database into one of 35 proprietary categories. Over time, though, we found the use of these categories to become limited as the number of ICOs and tokenized projects ballooned over the last year, and new specialized use cases for blockchain technology arose.

To allow for better defined reporting based on ICO categories, we developed 59 new categories to splice together similar projects, then organized them based on the primary service provided on the project’s platform or primary activity performed on the network.

For example, the legacy categories Data, Data Infrastructure, Data Exchange, Data Management, and Data Storage were analyzed and reorganized to develop the categories File Storage, Data Exchange, Computing, Prediction Markets, Blockchain & Smart Contract Development, Oracles, and IoT.

The legacy categories Intellectual Property and Content Management were reorganized into IP Sales, IP Ownership, and IP Distribution, depending on the service provided. The new Tokenized Securities and Tokenized Capital Resources categories were developed for projects that represent the tokenization of financial instruments like stocks or bonds, and those that deal with ownership and management of any physical commodity (including gold and silver as well as machines, land and other capital goods).

Since there are many projects that have substantial overlap between categories, we are also developing a tagging system in our database where secondary and tertiary categories can be designated for more granular searches and comparisons between projects and sub sectors. For example, a project like CV Proof, a career credentials validation platform, may fall primarily in the Employment category, while also being assigned a secondary category of Reputation.

The new project categories have also been designed to map easily to existing industrial classification systems like the Global Industrial Classification Standard, North American Industry Classification System, and Standard Industrial Classification Code, for comparisons between crowdsale projects and existing businesses in indices like the S&P 500. Mapping was conducted by assigning our categories to those defined by existing classification systems.

Some links are simple, like our Education category mapping to the Education Services* subindustry in the GICS system, or our Gambling to the GICS’ Casinos & Gambling**. Other GICS categories capture an outsized proportion of Token Report categories, mostly those dealing with Internet Software and Services*** and Specialized Consumer Services****, reflecting the focus of many blockchain projects in these areas. Of our 59 categories, 21 (36 percent) are mapped to these two GICS buckets representing just 1.3 percent of 157 possible sub industries.

Mapping to these external classifications systems will allow the comparison of existing organizations unrelated to cryptocurrency against those collected in our database on data like market cap, growth, financing, ROI, and more.

In the future, we will use these new project categories to conduct further explorations and deeper dives by industry, which will allow us to take a look at specific verticals. Below is a chart on total project counts in Q1 across the top 10 most-populated categories. Here, 21.3 percent of all projects fall within the three largest categories seen here. They’re all related to remittances (cross-border payments), financial management and investing.