EOS’s $4.2B ICO to Bullish NYSE IPO: Seven-Year Crypto Saga

Published: 2025-08-12 08:42:31 |

In 2017, blockchain investor Li Xiaolai dubbed EOS a “seven-year bet,” fueling Block.one’s landmark ICO that raised $4.2 billion. Touted as an “Ethereum killer,” EOS promised high throughput and zero fees but soon faced governance centralization under DPoS, resource model breakdowns and accusations that Block.one diverted funds into U.S. Treasuries, Bitcoin holdings and the Voice social platform. Frustrated, the EOS community launched a fork rebellion in 2021, forming the EOS Network Foundation (ENF). By December, ENF froze Block.one’s remaining 68 million EOS tokens, executed a hard fork to the community-led Antelope protocol and rebranded the network as Vaulta with Ethereum-compatible EVM support and grant funding via Pomelo. Meanwhile, Block.one invested part of the ICO proceeds into Bullish, a regulated exchange led by ex-NYSE president Tom Farley and backed by investors like Peter Thiel. Bullish acquired CoinDesk for $70 million in 2023 and is preparing a NYSE IPO targeting a $5 billion valuation, with institutions such as BlackRock as cornerstone investors. This seven-year journey highlights divergent paths in crypto: community-driven decentralization versus capital-driven compliance and institutional scaling.

Bullish

Bullish’s upcoming NYSE IPO backed by major institutions like BlackRock signals growing mainstream acceptance and inflow of institutional capital into the crypto sector, typically a bullish catalyst for market sentiment. Simultaneously, the successful community-led fork and rebrand of EOS to Vaulta demonstrate robust decentralization resilience, which can restore investor confidence in the network and its token. Historically, landmark exchange listings (e.g., Coinbase, Binance) have driven positive price action and trading volumes. In the short term, market volatility may rise around the IPO date, but the long-term outlook for both Vaulta (EOS) and the broader crypto market is strengthened by enhanced regulatory compliance and institutional participation.