A look at a rare ICO-era survivor: Electroneum, adapting and evolving

Around eight years have passed since the booming era of ICOs. It was a time when hundreds, perhaps thousands, of crypto projects collectively raised billions, primarily based on a lot of hype around blockchain technology.
The regrettable fact is that about 90% of those projects failed, collapsed, or pulled the rug, and very few survived into 2025.
However, one of the few ICO projects still actively innovating that deserves mention today is Electroneum, a British-born and based blockchain company.
Nearly a decade down the line and over four million users later, Electroneum continues to innovate. They have built and maintained one of the fastest blockchains with transaction finality in five seconds or less and transaction fees as low as .0001 ETN.
Real-world solutions to real-world problems
Electroneum is difficult to compare with other blockchain projects, as its purpose is and has always been unique.
The team has focused massively on delivering real-world solutions to real-world problems in areas that many other projects have simply ignored. Electroneum’s mobile-first approach was and continues to be unique.
For many years, Electroneum benefited hundreds of thousands of users in African, Asian, and Latin American countries, where very little goes a long way. Unlike Pi Network, which allows mobile phone mining for tokens with no clear use case, Electroneum’s mobile mining era (until 2019) rewarded mining participants with approximately $3 worth of ETN, enough to purchase monthly airtime and data in many developing countries.
Given their achievements, it came as no surprise that in 2019, Electroneum received City AM’s Crypto Award for Social Impact and Sustainability. As the London newspaper said, “They won the prize for empowering people in developing countries and the unbanked.”
Visionary partnerships and trailblazing ideas
They are trailblazers, too. In a 2019 article, top-tier crypto news outlet Coindesk lauded Electroneum’s launch of an $80 “dirt-cheap” M1 Android smartphone that rewarded users with crypto.
No other crypto project had come up with this brilliant idea. Inspired by them, others would soon follow, such as Solana. By the way, it’s still available on eBay for under $30, because they later decided to drop the price to make it even more accessible for those with less financial means.
Their CEO and Founder, prominent British entrepreneur Richard Ells, focused more on providing millions of the financially excluded with crypto services that truly addressed their issues, such as instant payments and portability, even in marginalised communities.
With that vision and mission in mind, the Electroenum leadership went to Cambodia, where they sealed a first-of-its-kind deal within the crypto industry.
The agreement with the Asian country’s largest mobile operator, Cellcard, meant ETN app users could top up their airtime and data using ETN. Additionally, Cellcard agreed to purchase one million M1 smartphones, which they displayed in their shops nationwide.
The agreement also meant Cellcard users can earn ETN rewards of up to $3 per month, which they can convert into ETN tokens and top up their Cellcard accounts.
Electroneum is also credited with becoming the first blockchain startup to join the GSM Association. This non-profit trade association represents the interests of more than 750 mobile network operators worldwide. As reported by Decrypt, the GSMA gave the M1 its stamp of approval, a highly significant achievement for any mobile phone vendor.
Pivoting toward a new evolutionary phase
Dozens of top crypto projects entered a downturn phase, and Electroneum has not been an exception. This brought on many external and internal challenges within their vast community. Support waned and disappointment grew, but all projects, even Ethereum, Cardano, and Ripple, have faced fierce criticism from experts as well as community leaders.
That era, brought on in part by the COVID-19 global crisis and exacerbated by the crypto winter of 2022 that wiped out roughly $2 trillion worth of crypto asset, caused the collapse of many more blockchain projects, but forwardthinking as Ells has proven to be, he took advantage to build, paving the way for Electroneum’s entrance into a new evolutionary phase.
His team got busy focusing on expanding its blockchain capabilities, ecosystem, and global reach. Ells publicly announced the start of the new era in May 2020, marking a new chapter for Electroneum.
The phase meant the team would leverage blockchain technology to bolster their financial inclusion mission for those marginalised by banks. And also to significantly expand their ecosystem, hence the recent Electroneum Hackathon, and global reach.
Growing on solid foundations for 4 million users
Project Aurelius is central to Electroneum’s transformation, a significant upgrade to the blockchain’s core infrastructure. The result is an EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain powered by the Istanbul Byzantine Fault Tolerance (IBFT) consensus mechanism, capable of 5-second transaction finality and ultra-low fees (as low as 0.0001 ETN).
The upgrade enables smart contract functionality using Solidity and Vyper, making it easier for developers to build decentralised applications on the network. It also improves performance for peer-to-peer payments, which is essential for real-world commerce and merchant adoption.
Its ecosystem includes the first decentralised Fiverr-like freelance platform, which was hugely well-received by thousands, if not tens of thousands, of financially excluded people worldwide. These individuals found they could earn ETH by completing digital tasks. It purportedly supports millions of users globally.
Unlike most charitable organisations, the project also continues to work closely with some amazing NGOs that have genuinely proven their efforts to help women, children, and their families in the short, medium, and long term. It also continues collaborating with Ripple, Quant, and the British Digital Pound Foundation to enhance CBDC governance and interoperability.