New research suggests that blockchain fundraising is often a hit or miss game. It appears that initial coin offerings (ICOs) either raise tons of money – or none at all.

Research from intelligence firm GreySpark has uncovered that 46 percent of ICOs fail to raise any funds at all. At the same time, the study also found that 40 percent of companies that pursued an ICO succeeded at raising more than $1 million.

It would seem that ICOs have a split personality, either they are wildly successful or they struggle to make an impact at all. For every ICO that raises over $1 million there is one that doesn’t raise a cent.

However, just because ICOs are able to raise money does not mean they are guaranteed to succeed.

GreySpark also examined the financial returns from ICOs over a six-week period. It appears that the more time passes, the less likely you are to make a return on an ICO investment.

The left hand side of the graph below shows the percentage of ICOs that have a positive return from one week to six weeks after the ICO. The takeaway here is that if you’re investing in ICOs, at best don’t expect a return within six weeks.

The right hand side of this graph plots the average returns after one week through to six weeks. It shows that six weeks after a public ICO has closed is where the greatest returns on investment are delivered. This suggests that returns tend to increase over time.

This might sound a bit confusing, but bear with me. The first set of ratios show that positive returns decrease over time, while the second set shows an increase in average returns over time. However, the two rations are different for one crucial reason. The right hand side of the graph concerns “successful” ICOs, where as the left considers all ICOs.

Basically, if you invest in an ICO and it is actually able to deliver on its promises you are likely in for a positive return.

However, there is a huge risk that you won’t invest in a successful ICO, as many struggle to make it any point of maturity. GreySpark claims this is because of “lack of traction, disappointing product advancements, scam, difficulties in execution, no market and poor marketing or go-to-market strategy.”

This is perhaps not surprising given that research conducted earlier this year pointed out that exit scams have conned over $100 million out of investors through illegitimate ICOs, which had no intention of ever offering a product.

Again, given that most of the top 100 cryptocurrencies don’t actually have a working product it’s not entirely surprising to see that the more time progresses the less likely it is that returns will ever be obtained.

If you invested in an ICO and you’re still waiting to see any return for your investment, with every week that passes it grows more likely that you never will see that return. Sorry.

Huawei is putting blockchain into the stratosphere

At its 2019 “ Cloud Summit ” industry conference in Hong Kong, Huawei unveiled a new blockchain-based cloud service.

Huawei Cloud now offers blockchain oriented services designed to help Hong Kong-based businesses make use of the decentralized platform’s typical characteristics. These being, decentralization, immutability, and traceability (transparency).

Huawei hopes this will aid the Chinese province’s mission to become an international financial and logistics hub.

Specific details of the blockchain service have not been disclosed. But given the wording used to promote the new offering it will be a form of privatized, permissioned ledger designed for corporate clients.

It shouldn’t be entirely surprising that Huawei‘s cloud division has got into the blockchain game. Late last year, Huawei featured as one of the founding telecom members in an “ industry specific group ” setup to explore the viability and potential of blockchain technologies for various industries.

Corporate applications of blockchain have become increasingly common in recent years. Everyone from Microsoft , to Amazon , to IBM , to Intel is finding a way to get into the blockchain game. It should be noted that while they often promise decentralization, immutability, and transparency, the specific application of these characteristics can vary wildly from platform to platform.

Hard Fork will be following Huawei Cloud’s use of blockchain and will report back with more details as soon as these are revealed.

Did you know? Hard Fork has its own stage at TNW2019 , our tech conference in Amsterdam. Check it out .

NASA looks to secure flight data with blockchain tech

NASA is exploring potential use-cases for blockchain technology in a bid to safeguard the privacy and security of aircraft flight data.

A research paper , published by aero-computer engineer Ronald Reisman this week, explored the viability of a blockchain network and smart contracts to overcome the aforementioned security issues.

Current radar-based air traffic service providers may be able to preserve privacy for military and corporate operations by preventing the public release of information pertaining to selected flights, position, and state data.

However, as of January 1, 2020, the US will have to use a new surveillance system known as Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B), which will make aircraft’s identity, position and information publicly available.

Reisman outlines a prototype – the Aviation Blockchain Infrastructure (ABI) – based on Hyperledger Fabric (one of the projects hosted by The Linux Foundation) and smart contracts , allowing for the control over what data is publicly or privately shared with authorized parties.

As outlined in the research, many blockchain system implementations give members the power to conduct private and confidential transactions while also co-existing with restricted members on the same blockchain-based network.

The channels would then be used for completing confidential transactions, meaning that, for example, aircraft state information such as altitude, longitude, and latitude could be kept secure via a private channel.

In contrast, information pertaining to the aircraft’s flight plan information (origin, destination, route of flight) could be made public by publishing it on a channel that’s accessible by all approved members.

NASA also made headlines last year when it gave a professor at University of Akron $330,000 to boost research into how an Ethereum-based blockchain network could automatically detect floating debris in space.