Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs)

ICOs were the original crypto token distribution craze (circa 2017), where projects sold tokens directly to investors in exchange for ETH or other capital.

This approach unlocked unprecedented global fundraising – startups and projects raised roughly $5.6 billion in 2017 alone via ICOs.

ICOs offered projects full control (setting the token price, sale supply, and timing) and gave early investors a chance at outsized returns.

However, they also suffered from centralization and trust issues: project teams held the tokens for sale and controlled allocation, and buyers had to trust that funds would be used as promised.

Regulatory scrutiny and scams proliferated, undermining investor confidence.

PoG differs fundamentally: it does not involve selling tokens for revenue.

Instead, it “auctions” tokens for gas burn, meaning participants’ expenditures go to the network’s miners/validators (or get burned as protocol fees) rather than to the project’s treasury.

In effect, PoG divorces the act of token distribution from direct fundraising – a double-edged sword.

On one hand, this enhances neutrality and removes the profit motive from the distribution process (the project isn’t directly enriched by the launch, so there is less temptation to favor insiders or manipulate outcomes).

On the other hand, projects may need alternative funding sources, since PoG is about decentralized allocation more than capital raise.

Teams typically would reserve some tokens for themselves (subject to lockups) or rely on secondary market appreciation for funding their work.

In terms of fairness, PoG addresses key ICO criticisms. ICOs often allowed large buyers to accumulate tokens cheaply in private pre-sales or via faster transaction execution, leaving smaller participants with fewer tokens or priced out entirely.

In PoG, everyone faces the same public gas market; whales cannot escape network congestion and must compete under the same transaction fee conditions.

There is no pre-sale or insider allocation – any attempt to gain an edge simply bids up the gas price for all participants.

This makes PoG a more egalitarian and transparent process at launch.

Whereas ICOs had elements of first-come-first-serve or closed-door deals, PoG’s competitive burn mechanism ensures that only genuine on-chain action – not off-chain arrangements – determines the outcome.