Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are making a comeback in the crypto market; according to ICO Drops, there are currently 232 active and 743 upcoming ICOs. Even more noteworthy is the success of two major ICOs in 2025. Plasma, a Layer 1 blockchain focusing on the optimization of stablecoin transactions, raised a $500 million ICO within minutes; the other project is Pump Fun, Solana’s memecoin launchpad, which also raised $500 million in under 12 minutes.
With this type of traction, it is no surprise that crypto market innovators and investors are reconsidering ICOs as an avenue for raising funds or getting early exposure to valuable projects. The beauty about this new wave of ICOs is that, unlike the 2017 era, most of the projects looking for funds are building with fundamental use cases in mind. Previously, over 80% of the ICOs were pump and dump schemes whose sole business model was to dupe unsuspecting investors.
That said, it is still important to separate the wheat from the chaff. The next section of this article will highlight the three most anticipated ICOs of 2025 based on criteria such as the project’s ability to drive utility, tokenomics, and the amount of backing or trust they already have.
1) True Trading
True Trading is building the world’s first “trainable” AI DeFi trading platform; think of it as the “ChatGPT for decentralized finance”.
Unlike the typical crypto trading platforms where users have to interact with charts for technical analysis or do some fundamental research, the TRUE AI DEX will offer a conversational and AI-first trading environment where users can trade and invest as easily as chatting with a friend. The concept is similar to that of ChatGPT, with the only difference being that True Trading is focused on trading/investing strategies or executions.
This project’s token sale is set to commence on 10th September, allowing early entrants to acquire its native token $TRUE through SOL or USDC. According to the outlined tokenomics, $TRUE has a fixed supply of 1 trillion tokens; out of these, 10% are scheduled for release in the first stage of the token sale. The sale will commence with a tiered Dutch auction for price discovery, with estimates showing an 8x price differential from the final stage for buyers who will purchase during the first tranche.
Besides the project’s value proposition, True Trading is being built by a solid team of crypto experts; the co-founders include Ben Bilski (founder of The NAGA Group AG), Valerii Marshalin (co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of INC4), Igor Stadnyk (founder and CEO of INC4), and Alex Momot (CEO of Peanut Trade).
2) Bitcoin Hyper
This Layer 2 Bitcoin Network is among the standout projects that are building a solution to unlock Bitcoin’s liquidity.
The Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is currently ongoing and has already raised $6.9 million. It is expected to run through Q3 and Q4 2025 as Bitcoin Hyper gears up for the official Token Generation Event (TGE) of its native token, $HYPE. The initial presale price was set at $0.011500 per token but it has since increased to $0.012375. According to the tokenomics, the total supply is capped at 21 billion tokens; treasury (25%), marketing (20%), rewards (15%), listings (10%), and development (30%).
What particularly stands out about this project is the efficiency of its Bitcoin L2 network. At the core, Bitcoin Hyper supports fast and low-cost BTC transactions; the network is powered by Solana’s high throughput virtual machine (SVM), which also provides users with exposure to DeFi yield opportunities such as staking. More importantly, Bitcoin Hyper also addresses Bitcoin’s lack of programmability by allowing users to build modern DApps that tap into Bitcoin’s liquidity.
Buyers of the $HYPE ICO are not only set to benefit from a potentially significant upside but also gain early access into the ecosystem and perform key functions such as transaction payments, staking access, developer grants, and other incentives. The project also enjoys the support of the primary DeFi ecosystems, including Solana and Ethereum.
3) Solaxy
Solaxy was another highly anticipated ICO in 2025; this Layer 2 Solana project has already raised a whopping $58.13 million at a pre-valuation of $224.46 million.
The Token Generation Event (TGE) for the native token, $SOLX, went live about 3 months ago but the distribution process is still ongoing. Early buyers now have the opportunity to stake their $SOLX tokens for ecosystem rewards; according to the information on the website, the distribution on the rewards is programmed to occur at a rate of 4377.4 SOLX tokens per ETH block. It is also worth noting that SOLX is already trading on Uniswap V3, Bilaxy and KCEX, but is yet to list on major CEXs and DEXs as per the project’s roadmap.
While Solana’s DeFi ecosystem is synonymous with high performance, it still faces limitations in sustaining transaction reliability during peak usage. Solaxy addresses this limitation by introducing a Layer 2 designed with rollup architecture; this enables the network to process transactions off-chain and bundle them into optimized batches for on-chain verification. As such, this Solana Layer 2 can handle high-frequency DApps, including meme coins, gaming ecosystems and customized financial apps.
Given how much this project has raised so far, it is arguably one of the successful ICOs of 2025. SOLX total supply is capped at 1 billion tokens, with 25% set to be allocated towards ecosystem rewards for early supporters.
Conclusion
As mentioned in the introduction, the ICO market is gaining some momentum. This is no coincidence given the growing interest in value-based crypto projects, from private institutions, authorities to the retail buyers. Regulatory conditions are also ripe for this type of crypto investment vehicles to make a comeback. The projects featured in this listicle are some of the initiatives that could potentially be early plays, but as always, investors ought to do proper due diligence before allocating any funds.
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