The period from March to July 2017 witnessed an unprecedented explosion in Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs—fundraising method using cryptocurrency tokens) built on the Ethereum blockchain, fundamentally enabled by smart contracts (self-executing digital agreements). This chapter examines how the ICO boom created a new paradigm for startup financing that bypassed traditional venture capital, raising over $6.2 billion in 2017 alone compared to traditional VC’s $84 billion globally. The analysis reveals how Ethereum’s supply constraints, combined with explosive demand, created an overfunding phenomenon where projects received 10–50 times their target amounts due to ETH price appreciation from $10 to $777. Through examination of platform creation data and survival rates, we document the emergence of over 100,000 tokens by 2017’s end, representing both revolutionary innovation and spectacular failures that helped establish the foundations of today’s decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.