A nearly forgotten relic of the ICO era is experiencing a surprising revival. Status, a decentralized messaging app built on Ethereum, has surged into the top three most actively developed crypto projects of the past month.

This news comes courtesy of a March 21st post by Santiment, a crypto intelligence platform. According to their data, Status, once a dormant project, has racked up over 434 commits on GitHub in the last 30 days, placing it just behind Cardano in development activity.

Imagine a Discord or Telegram alternative built for crypto communities. That's the vision behind Status, which boasts features like sending crypto directly within chats and user signup using crypto wallet addresses instead of phone numbers.

While Status might seem like a new player, its roots go back much further. Launched in July 2017 during the ICO frenzy, it raised a cool $100 million for its SNT token in a single day. However, the project faced legal challenges in 2020 with a class-action lawsuit claiming the token sale was unregistered.

Fast forward to November 2023, and Status is back with a vengeance, announcing upcoming alpha and beta versions of its app. Their blog post acknowledges past struggles, including an overly ambitious initial vision and scaling hurdles that forced them to abandon their "Whisper" protocol. Staff layoffs during the 2018 crypto crash further hampered progress.

However, the 2022 bull run provided the financial resources needed to get back on track. "We were able to scale the organization back up to tackle our ambitious vision," the Status team writes.

The project's SNT token reflects this renewed activity. It's currently trading at $0.04, up slightly over the past day and roughly 50% over the past year. Though still down significantly from its 2018 peak of $0.68, SNT's recent performance hints at a potential comeback story.