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Just like any new machine like a refrigerator, washing machine, microwave, comes with a user manual, ICO comes with its white paper. But in the case of ICO, a whitepaper is more important than a user manual. It decides the future of your project and whether it is going to work or not. Don’t mistake an ICO white paper with the introduction of your project because it is more than that. An ICO whitepaper should include various information such as the explanation of how you are going to make your idea work, the description of the token sale, even the roadmap of your entire project. It should also include the details of the team members and partners who will be accompanying you with your project throughout the journey.
Writing a good whitepaper doesn’t guarantee success for your project but it could greatly affect your project negatively if not written properly. This is the reason you should avoid even small mistakes in your ICO white paper.
Writing a good ICO paper is not an affair of a single person and it requires proper collaboration between the team members of the project. There have been many cases of such projects in the past that merely got flop because of the poor whitepaper. If you don’t want the same thing to happen to your idea, keep reading about the mistakes to avoid while writing an ICO white paper.
Format Of An ICO WhitePaper
An ICO makes fundraising easy for your business project. If you are wondering to do an ICO without a whitepaper then you are already out of the game. Think of it like if you go to the business angel without an actual strategy of your business. What do you expect would happen? Will you be able to raise money for your project? Of course not! There’s no shortcut or an easy way of doing ICO, you would need to be fully prepared with your idea and a perfect ICO to attract your potential investors. Before we start mentioning the common mistakes to avoid while writing an ICO white paper, let’s know about the format it should be written in.
The format of an ICO white paper should be as follows:
- First of all, the title of your Whitepaper should be attractive enough to make the reader interested in your idea. Being creative will not make you earn the trust of investors, instead, your title should be concise and understandable.
- Before you step directly to the introduction, abstract of your project. This abstract should outline your project’s idea including what is in your whitepaper and why should investors read it.
- Now you can introduce your project.
- Problems that needed to be addressed in the Market
- Their potential solution
- The entire Roadmap of your project
- Token Details and distribution
- Describe how your product can assist these problems in the market
- Legal Security plan
- The team behind the project
In the end, you must include a summary of your Whitepaper.
Some ICO White Paper Writing Mistakes
Given below are some of the common mistakes to avoid while writing an ICO white paper.
Unnecessary Details
A book might need the information regarding the background of the author, theme etc for various purposes but there’s no such requirement of background details in Whitepaper. It’s pointless to add information regarding the history of blockchain and cryptocurrency. Remember you are here to introduce your project idea, so just stick to it. Adding unnecessary details like this, you will only bore away your potential investors.
Grammatical Errors
It was long ago when people were not aware of cryptocurrencies much but nowadays investors read the ICO White Paper very carefully. Any mistake in your White Paper would give them a wrong impression about your project. Spelling mistakes and grammatical errors are the most common issues seen in the universe of Whitepaper.
If you are situated in the area where English is not your first language, then you would need to hire someone to write the whitepaper for you. Don’t just hire someone with good English but who has experience in writing cryptocurrency ICO. Even if you are not hiring a professional ICO Whitepaper writer, you should get it proofread by someone experienced. If you want your project to be successful, you would have to invest in it first and you know very well that it would be worth it.
Just Targeting Crypto Savvy Audience
It was the initial days of cryptocurrency when only crypto savvy investors were interested in reading the Whitepaper. But now crypto space has hit the mainstream and even common people are showing interest in it. If you’ll add too much technical details into your White paper, you’ll already lose a lot of interested investors. Although, for technical information, you can create a separate technical reader so that the audience will have a choice and it will also leave a good impression of your project.
The Longer The Better
Writing a long whitepaper, won’t make investors attracted instead they wouldn’t even complete reading it. Investors don’t have enough patience as well as time to read unnecessary information. They would dismiss your Whitepaper as soon as they realized that it’s just fluffed with words and have no point. Try to make your Whitepaper point to point with facts, case studies as well as technical details. When you are done writing your Whitepaper, take some time to proofread it and cut out everything that is not necessary.
Formatting Errors
This happens most of the time and it leaves a bad impression of your company on the investors. The first thing any reader is going to pay attention to is the format of your WhitePaper. It should look clean, tidy and worth reading. It’s always worth it to get a graphic designer who can manage all these things. Get a front cover and back cover designed for your whitepaper. The images, styles and layout used in your document should be consistent.
Final Thoughts
So, these were the most common mistakes to avoid while writing an ICO white paper. In case, you want to know more about how to write a WhitePaper, you should read our guide on how to write the most compelling white papers.
The ICO Whitepaper of your project represents the vision of your idea in a written form. By making these silly mistakes, you will not only leave a bad impression on the readers but also lose your potential investors as well as long term supporters. While a good whitepaper does not guarantee the success of the project, a bad one can definitely affect it badly.
