Vitalik Buterin participates in creating new ICO protocol with flexible bets on tokens

Vitalik Buterin has become a co-author of a new protocol for ICOs based on Ethereum smart contracts that can potentially solves issues of either too fast or insufficient token purchases.

The protocol designed with assistance from Jason Teutsch (founder of the Ethereum scalability project) supposes that investors can place a bet on token purchase and take it. It means the following: investors make a condition that they will buy one thousand tokens if 50 000 tokens are sold in total. The fulfilment of this condition depends on smart contracts. If the outcome is positive, the smart contract become active and the investor obtains tokens. If the specified amount of tokens are not sold up to the end of the ICO, the smart contract gets cancelled and the investor receives their money back.

Such smart contract bets can be withdrawn automatically prior to their fulfillment. However, the authors assert that ICOs can be adjusted so that the bet withdrawal would be allowed, for instance, only within 20 of 30 days of a tokensale.