Internet Capital Market ( ICM ): New Paradigm or Another Round of Speculation?

The Internet Capital Market ( ICM ), as a crypto-native alternative to traditional capital markets, allows entrepreneurs to raise funds directly from the online community through tokenization, bypassing traditional financing processes. The Believe platform is the first to promote this transformation on the Solana chain, where users can easily issue and invest in projects by simply @ mentioning the platform account on social media.

Despite issues such as regulatory gaps and low thresholds, ICM still has strong potential for widespread adoption, especially in simplifying user experience, providing fiat payment options, and facilitating viral propagation. To achieve long-term development, the ICM platform needs to establish a founder accountability mechanism, optimize the token economic model, build DAO governance, and realize real value, thus transforming into a new capital formation model.

In traditional Capital Market, entrepreneurs often rely on time-consuming and expensive IPOs or venture capital financing. This model is inefficient, lacks openness, and leads to misalignment of incentives for creators and supporters. The market urgently needs a more open, direct, and participatory financing method, which is precisely the core issue that ICM aims to address.

ICM allows entrepreneurs to raise funds for their products directly through the internet, simply by tokenizing their ideas to immediately gain support from investors. Investors hold assets directly through self-custody wallets, fully controlling ownership and liquidity. This significantly lowers the barrier for ordinary people to participate in investing, and also enables project parties to obtain startup capital more efficiently.

Currently, the leader of the ICM ecosystem is the Believe platform on Solana. It allows founders to issue tokens through social media, attempting to disrupt traditional venture capital models and provide a decentralized, community-driven alternative. The platform once reached a market value of 314 million USD, with multiple project tokens achieving high market caps.

Compared to the competing product Clanker, Believe has clear advantages in user experience, narrative structure, and growth potential.

1. Greater ecological impact, supported by well-known founders.

2. The user experience is simpler and more intuitive, supporting fiat currency purchases.

3. The vision centered around the development of real projects resonates more.

However, the ICM model also faces many challenges:

1. Founders do not bear any responsibility, and there is a lack of protection mechanisms.

2. The disconnect between tokens and underlying projects can easily lead to misunderstandings as high-quality early investments.

3. The narrative of "supported projects" has been abused, and meaningless tokens have gained more attention.

To avoid becoming a target for short-term speculation, the ICM platform needs to:

1. Optimize the economic model to incentivize founders to continuously advance the project.

2. Establish a DAO mechanism to enhance transparency and accountability.

3. Build deeper practical value to attract mainstream users.

4. Promote meaningful community governance.

5. Establish a system for founders to be continuously responsible.

6. Integrate projects with real-world application scenarios.

The true value of ICM lies in its ability to attract and convert a large number of Web2 users without requiring deep Web3 knowledge. If it can continuously optimize its model and expand its unique positioning, ICM is expected to become an important force in promoting the popularization of Web3.