Raising capital by your tokens issue - blockchain technology may disrupt fundraising as you know it. Thousands of projects have already raised billions of dollars through ICO. Why might yours be next?

What will you find in the article?

What is the intial coin offering?
Advatages of ICO
How do ICOs work?
Launching ICO step by step
Different structure models of ICO
ICO vs IPO
STO vs ICO

Most technology startups have limited options when it comes to fundraising. They can either raise a seed round from private investors, pitch a VC fund, or start a crowdfunding campaign.

But if your project is blockchain-based, entirely new possibilities emerge, among them, you can find an initial coin offering (ICO). With ICO, you can issue your own utility tokens to be used in the network you want to create. As it grows, the demand for tokens increases, the same as their price, bringing profits to early investors.

An initial coin offering - ICO is a blockchain industry equivalent of IPO (Initial Public Offering). Find why issuing tokens may be the best way to raise funds for your project.

What is the initial coin offering?

Among STO and IDO, initial coin offering is one of the fundraising methods brought to life thanks to Blockchain technology. Essentially, an initial coin offering regards raising funds for a project by issuing new cryptocurrency where new blockchain-based projects mint and sell new tokens in exchange for other digital assets or fiat money.

Eventually, those token will have a specific utility on the platform built for funds raised during the ICO. For example, they may be exchanged for products or services of the company. In other cases, they become governance tokens that allow investors to vote to shape the project’s future.

How did it start?

Everything started in 2013 with Mastercoin’s initial coin offering that raised approximately 5 million dollars. The Mastercoin launch was quickly followed by Ethereum. Yes, that’s right - one of the most influential technology projects of this decade was funded via an initial coin offering. During Ethereum's ICO, creators raised 18 million dollars. To this day, Ethereum remains one of the most successful ICOs.

Yet, those 18 million sounds like nothing, compared to the 4 billion raised by EOS in several rounds during 2018-2019. It was the largest ICO to date.

Democratization of fundraising

But initial coin offering (ICO) isn’t all about big projects with enormous capital for fundraising campaigns. Their main advantage over IPO is allowing also smaller startups to arrange a successful funding round.

Advantages of initial coin offerings

Speed

Quick access to funding at a seed stage. Conducting an ICO campaign can be a matter of just a few weeks.

Fewer legal requirements

ICOs are far less regulated than any other fundraising method. Hence they require minimal bureaucracy.

Your project, your equity

During ICO, you can raise funds without loss of equity.

Community

Your ICO investors will create a strong community, willing to test and even promote the project.

Liquidity

Global markets, where your tokens will be sold, operate 24/7.

Fundraising without borders

Contrary to a public offering, your tokens will be sold on a global market, which means that the campaign doesn’t have to be restricted to one jurisdiction. Anyone with a crypto wallet can buy them.

How do ICOs work?

Essentially, launching initial coin offerings means issuing your own tokens that will have a specific utility in your project. That’s why they are named Utility Tokens. You can read more about different token types in this article. Contrary to a securities offering, ICO doesn’t grant investors shares of the company. Instead, they distribute tokens with a specific utility in the project that will be built for raised funds.

To raise money through initial coin offering, startups usually start with creating a white paper. This is a document that describes the project and its goals, providing investors with information that may help them decide whether they want to participate.

During the ICO process, investors buy tokens with other cryptocurrencies or fiat money. If the funding requirements are met, raised capital will support the creation of the project. If they aren’t, they may be returned to investors. It depends on chosen structure model.

Different structure models of ICO

Initial coin offerings may be structured in various ways. In some examples, tokens sold during ICO have a fixed price and specified limited supply. In contrast, others limit the supply but leave the token price dynamic, which means that fundraising will depend on the amount of raised funds.

There are also initial coin offerings that set a static price of token and dynamic token supply that depends on the amount of funding received.

ICO and federal securities laws

It’s important to note that currently, in the majority of jurisdictions, ICOs remain largely unregulated. This means that they are far less restricted than IPOs or even STOs.

Essentially, most tokens issued during ICO aren’t treated as securities because they don’t represent any equity in the project. Instead, they have a certain utility in their network.

How to raise capital via ICO?

In the whole initial coin offering process, the following stages can be distinguished:

Make sure your project needs ICO

A brief disclaimer: not every company qualifies for ICO. And even if it does, there may be better alternatives.

ICO isn’t a universal solution that will suit every project. Many factors should be taken into consideration before choosing it.

First of all, initial coin offerings work best for blockchain-based projects. There are many good ICOs out right now; hence the competition for the attention of investors is high. If your project uses unnecessary tokens and doesn’t back them with attractive utility, investors probably won’t be interested in putting their funds into it.

Yet, the crypto industry offers more solutions that support fundraising. Some of them, as STO, are also suitable for non-blockchain projects.

Get to know the local law

ICOs are a relatively new fundraising solution. Hence many countries still haven’t developed a clear legal framework for them.

So far, only China and South Korea have banned ICOs. Yet, you have to be aware that in some jurisdictions launching your private ICO will be much easier than in others. You can find more information regarding this issue in our article: The 5 most popular jurisdictions for your company’s tokenization.

Create a distribution plan

The plan will depend on your primary requirements and assumptions. For instance, there may be different stages of the token sale before you get to the actual initial coin offering. For example, Telegram managed to raise $850 million during the pre-sale only.

At this stage, you have to decide which of the previously mentioned models you will choose? Is the price going to be stable or rather dynamic? What about the supply? Moreover, you should determine how many of them will be sold at each stage of the token sale.

Choose the right technology

This may sound trivial, but the right technology solutions are the backbone of your ICO’s success. There are several universally required technologies, among them blockchain, smart contracts, tokens, and solid back-end and security infrastructure.

When it comes to blockchain, the majority of the companies decide to use established, well-known protocols. In most cases, it’s Ethereum. Launching an ICO on your own blockchain is possible and can sometimes be observed in the industry. Yet, it’s time and cost-consuming. Additionally, for the majority of projects, there is no need to do so.

White paper

A white paper is a document that describes the project and explains its goals in almost every possible detail. It’s aimed to provide potential investors with the information needed to decide whether they want to participate. This includes:

Vision
Market analysis
Goals
Available resources
Development strategy
Legal frames
Details regarding token and its distribution
Description of the team

Not sure how to write a proper white paper? Our consultants will gladly guide you through the whole process.

Website creation

You need to face that your project will be judged mainly by the content and appearance of its website. It has to contain clear information about your team, aims, and measures to protect investors’ interests.

Before ICO launch, the website should also feature a token sale landing page. Remember about approachable UX here.

ICO vs. IPO

The main difference between IPO and ICO lies in equity. During ICO, owners don’t have to give up a part of their equity in exchange for funds, as they do with shares in the case of IPO. Instead, they issue tokens that will have a utility in their project. Therefore, ICO is mainly used for blockchain-based projects.

Because during the ICO no equities are sold, there are fewer restrictions regarding ICOs than IPOs. For example, most ICOs don't fall under securities law. Thus, they require less bureaucracy and are more suitable for seed-stage startups. Furthermore, investing in ICO tokens isn't restricted to accredited investors, as it happens with IPO.

ICO vs. STO: main differences

There are different types of token offerings out there. One of the most important is the slightly younger STO - security token offering. Here instead of utility tokens, security tokens are issued. This means that their value is backed by real assets - for example, shares in the company or real estate. You can read more about security tokens in this article.

The main advantage of STO is that they are suitable for various projects, not only blockchain-based ones. In this way, you can even tokenize alternative assets, such as cars or precious metals.

On the other hand, because tokens represent specific equity, they are treated as securities. And this means far more legal restrictions.

What is ICO? - Conclusion

Initial coin offerings are an excellent opportunity for seed-stage startups to raise capital for further development. During the past 6 years, billions of dollars have been raised using ICO, funding such projects as Telegram or Ethereum. At the same time investing in ICO gained tremendous popularity, even outside the crypto community.

Yet as with every solution, they aren’t free from limitations. While from a technology perspective process is getting easier every year, more and more legal restrictions emerge. Furthermore, because of several ICO projects, reaching investors now requires a well-planned marketing strategy.

Are you interested in launching your own ICO, but you are not sure if your team will manage to fulfill all the requirements? After conducting one of the first tokenizations globally and many other ICOs, we may say that we know the ropes of successful tokenization. Hence, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

Master UI Component Creation with AI: The Ultimate Guide for Developers

Gracjan Prusik

24 Mar 2025

Master UI Component Creation with AI: The Ultimate Guide for Developers

Introduction

Modern frontend development is evolving rapidly, and creating UI components with AI tools is helping developers save time while enhancing interface quality. With AI, we can not only speed up the creation of UI components but also improve their quality, optimize styles, and ensure better accessibility.

This article explores how creating UI components with AI is transforming frontend development by saving time and improving workflows. Specifically, we will discuss:

Generating components from images,
AI for style analysis and optimization,
Automatic style conversion and code migration,
AI in generating UI animations.

Creating UI Components with AI from Images

One of the interesting applications of AI in frontend development is the ability to generate components from an image. AI can recognize the structure of the interface and generate HTML/CSS or JSX code that matches the provided image. One of the most popular tools for UI creation is Lovable.

For testing, let's see how the tool performs in creating a simple contact form from the page you are currently on, which is Nextrope.

Query:

"Recreate the image I've sent you in Next.js using CSS."

Sample image used in the query:

The result received:

Tworzenie komponentów UI - Wygenerowany widok

Lovable did an excellent job transforming the image into code. The view is fully responsive. It’s important to remember that the more precise the request, the better the AI will replicate the expected view. However, even with a simple command, the tool performed surprisingly well.

Of course, AI has its limitations. It still makes quite a few mistakes. The generated code still requires review and fixes from the developer, but in some cases, the entire process is significantly sped up—correcting the code often takes less time than creating the component from scratch.

Optimizing UI Components with AI Tools for Style Improvements

This problem of inaccurate code reproduction by AI can be partially addressed by using it to analyze and improve styles. Tools like ChatGPT, DeepSeek and Claude are capable of not only generating code but also diagnosing CSS errors and suggesting why a particular style might not be working as expected.

Simple example: Why is the div not centered?

Query: "Why is this div not centered?"

AI analyzes the code and provides the following response:

Problem: The parent container does not have a defined width or display: flex.
Solution: Add the appropriate styles to the parent container.

.parent {
  display: flex;
  justify-content: center;
  align-items: center;
  width: 100vw;
  height: 100vh;
}

AI for Automatic Style Conversion and Code Migration in UI Components

AI can assist with style conversion between different technologies, such as transferring code from traditional CSS to Styled Components or Tailwind CSS.

Let's assume we have a style written in traditional CSS:

.button {
  background-color: blue;
  color: white;
  padding: 10px 20px;
  border-radius: 5px;
  transition: background-color 0.3s ease;
}

.button:hover {
  background-color: darkblue;
}

We can use AI for automatic conversion to Styled Components:

import styled from "styled-components";

const Button = styled.button`
  background-color: blue;
  color: white;
  padding: 10px 20px;
  border-radius: 5px;
  transition: background-color 0.3s ease;

  &:hover {
    background-color: darkblue;
  }
`;

export default Button;

AI can also assist in migrating code between frameworks, such as from React to Vue or from CSS to Tailwind.

This makes style migration easier and faster.

How AI Enhances UI Animation Creation

Animations are crucial for enhancing user experience in interfaces, but they are not always provided in the project specification. In such cases, developers have to come up with how the animations should look, which can be time-consuming and require significant creativity. AI, in this context, becomes helpful because it can automatically generate CSS animations or animations using libraries like Framer Motion, saving both time and effort.

Example: Automatically Generated Button Animation

Suppose we need to add a subtle scaling animation to a button but don't have a ready-made animation design. Instead of creating it from scratch, AI can generate the code that meets our needs.

Code generated by AI:

import { motion } from "framer-motion";

const AnimatedButton = () => (
  <motion.button
    whileHover={{ scale: 1.1 }}
    whileTap={{ scale: 0.9 }}
    className="bg-blue-500 text-white px-4 py-2 rounded-lg"
  >
    Press me
  </motion.button>
);

In this way, AI accelerates the animation creation process, providing developers with a simple and quick option to achieve the desired effect without the need to manually design animations from scratch.

Summary

AI significantly accelerates the creation of UI components. We can generate ready-made components from images, optimize styles, transform code between technologies, and create animations in just a few seconds. Tools like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Claude and Lovable are a huge help for frontend developers, enabling faster and more efficient work.

In the next part of the series, we will take a look at:

How AI helps in frontend code refactoring
Code review with AI: Which tools help analyze code?
Optimizing the performance of frontend applications with AI

If you want to learn more about how AI is impacting the entire automation of frontend processes and changing the role of developers, check out our blog article: AI in Frontend Automation – How It's Changing the Developer's Job?

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AI in Real Estate: How Does It Support the Housing Market?

Miłosz Mach

18 Mar 2025

AI in Real Estate: How Does It Support the Housing Market?

Table of Contents

AI vs. Tradition: Key Implementations of AI in Real Estate
Integration of AI with Blockchain in Real Estate
The Future of AI in Real Estate: Trends and Forecasts
Conclusion

The digital transformation is reshaping numerous sectors of the economy, and real estate is no exception. By 2025, AI will no longer be a mere gadget but a powerful tool that facilitates customer interactions, streamlines decision-making processes, and optimizes sales operations. Simultaneously, blockchain technology ensures security, transparency, and scalability in transactions. With this article, we launch a series of publications exploring AI in business, focusing today on the application of artificial intelligence within the real estate industry.

AI vs. Tradition: Key Implementations of AI in Real Estate

Designing, selling, and managing properties—traditional methods are increasingly giving way to data-driven decision-making.

Breakthroughs in Customer Service

AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants are revolutionizing how companies interact with their customers. These tools handle hundreds of inquiries simultaneously, personalize offers, and guide clients through the purchasing process. Implementing AI agents can lead to higher-quality leads for developers and automate responses to most standard customer queries. However, technical challenges in deploying such systems include:

Integration with existing real estate databases: Chatbots must have access to up-to-date listings, prices, and availability.
Personalization of communication: Systems must adapt their interactions to individual customer needs.
Management of industry-specific knowledge: Chatbots require specialized expertise about local real estate markets.

Advanced Data Analysis

Cognitive AI systems utilize deep learning to analyze complex relationships within the real estate market, such as macroeconomic trends, local zoning plans, and user behavior on social media platforms. Deploying such solutions necessitates:

Collecting high-quality historical data.
Building infrastructure for real-time data processing.
Developing appropriate machine learning models.
Continuously monitoring and updating models based on new data.

Intelligent Design

Generative artificial intelligence is revolutionizing architectural design. These advanced algorithms can produce dozens of building design variants that account for site constraints, legal requirements, energy efficiency considerations, and aesthetic preferences.

Optimizing Building Energy Efficiency

Smart building management systems (BMS) leverage AI to optimize energy consumption while maintaining resident comfort. Reinforcement learning algorithms analyze data from temperature, humidity, and air quality sensors to adjust heating, cooling, and ventilation parameters effectively.

Integration of AI with Blockchain in Real Estate

The convergence of AI with blockchain technology opens up new possibilities for the real estate sector. Blockchain is a distributed database where information is stored in immutable "blocks." It ensures transaction security and data transparency while AI analyzes these data points to derive actionable insights. In practice, this means that ownership histories, all transactions, and property modifications are recorded in an unalterable format, with AI aiding in interpreting these records and informing decision-making processes.

The Future of AI in Real Estate: Trends and Forecasts

AI has the potential to bring significant value to the real estate sector—estimated between $110 billion and $180 billion by experts at McKinsey & Company.

Key development directions over the coming years include:

Autonomous negotiation systems: AI agents equipped with game theory strategies capable of conducting complex negotiations.
AI in urban planning: Algorithms designed to plan city development and optimize spatial allocation.
Property tokenization: Leveraging blockchain technology to divide properties into digital tokens that enable fractional investment opportunities.

Conclusion

For companies today, the question is no longer "if" but "how" to implement AI to maximize benefits and enhance competitiveness. A strategic approach begins with identifying specific business challenges followed by selecting appropriate technologies.

What values could AI potentially bring to your organization?

Reduction of operational costs through automation
Enhanced customer experience and shorter transaction times
Increased accuracy in forecasts and valuations, minimizing business risks

Want to implement AI in your real estate business?

Nextrope specializes in implementing AI and blockchain solutions tailored to specific business needs. Our expertise allows us to:

Create intelligent chatbots that serve customers 24/7
Implement analytical systems for property valuation
Build secure blockchain solutions for real estate transactions

Schedule a free consultation

Or check out other articles from the "AI in Business" series