The Role of User-Generated Content in Blockchain-Based Decentralized Finance

Abstract

The formation of IT companies and even of entire new technological ecosystems depends heavily on external financing. Consequently, the IS community has intensely studied various financing sources such as venture capital, initial public offerings or debt. Blockchain technology has led to the emergence of a system of decentralized finance (DeFi) which includes decentralized versions of equity and debt financing. In particular, equity-like fundraisings referred to as initial coin offerings (ICO) have received serious traction. In this paper, we investigate the role of user-generated content (UGC) for ICO success. Specifically, we leverage signaling theory to analyze how the activity on blogs and discussion forums is related to the amount of capital raised and the valuation in ICOs. We analyze data of 216 ICOs and provide first results indicating the importance of discussion forum activity for ICO success. Furthermore, we find that blogs seem less relevant than in traditional finance.