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For people who are coming from strong coding or IT background, they could verify like if apps is updated, source code is having error or so.

How about ways for non technical user

1) Whitepaper
2) Ann Thread
3) Verify The Project Owner

We have came across multiple of Big Scam Project - OPAIR , Ebitz, LetItRide

Both 3 has a very good written whitepaper, very good and innovative idea, clear and informative info graphics. Except On Project Team Member which is not verified/listed.

Therefore, if you wanted to invest in some project

Other than understanding the mandatory of the project, what would you look at?

very good question and i often think about this myself. and more importantly i am always looking for a way to do all this fast and efficient. you know there are a lot of projects and if you want to spend a lot of time on each of them you would be sitting behind desk reading all day long.

i haven't come up with a solution yet though!

the best thing i can think of is reading feedback. for example reading the ANN thread. and after a while you will find other user's that you value their opinion. for example a random feedback by a random user will always be random but if a certain member who you trust because you saw him give good opinions before is going to be different.

ONLY WHEN THOSE MUTHERFUCKERS WILL PAYED AFTER MILESTONES is reached  it will be OVER
without it you can be fucked ALLWAYS :D

It's easy to filter out most scam projects with 2 simple rules.
Even though non technical users aren't able to read the code, they can verify how long developers have been working on the project or previous crypto projects and reject those coming from developers who have shorter than 1 year track records of solid development work.
It's also easy for non technical users to read reported issues on the code repositories and watch how developers respond and fix these issues, how fast they can find and fix vulnerabilities. Everyone including non technical users can watch and make conclusions on the competence of developers based on the repository activity.

There are some simple methods to check for ICO scams :

- Check escrow conditions, if there is no milestone, don't invest.
- Check the identity of each team member, the photos are not enough, check their social accounts, google them, do anything to get their ID. if not, then it is 90% a scam.
- Don't waste time on whitepaper, it is made for technical users who can understand the content.
- If somone invites you to invest, and wears their signature, beware, he may be paid to get investors (at the moment just a few users do this)
- Ask them the ICO scam killer questions like : Where is your business plan ? what is your expected realisation delay ? Where is your financial plan ? ...

With these, you can easily avoid ICO scams, but even Bust them.

Oh yeah, forgot that asking questions is a kill, remind me of something

True agree on the photos of team member is not sufficient as photos can be took, and even use others social profile

The questions i asked to ascendancy just killed them, they deleted them (as it was a self moderated post), in the end, it appeared to be a scam. On background they was sending me PMs inviting me to talk to annother guy for these kind of questions which looked suspicious to me, this is why i droped them.

I feel 99% of the ICO ventures are created to scam people. It's like making 1000 bitcoins by investing 200-300 bitcoins.
There are many accusations on these ventures as the owner pays to people to scam others and increasing the investment by putting the bid himself.
Most of them won't show their owners and developers so that they can scam again and again.

That is cold. I mean you just asked couple of questions and dropped a huge operations, I wonder why they couldn’t just LIE. I mean they are scamming people by your explanation, they should figure out that there will be people sniffing around, they should prepare themselves for it. Seems like it is at least what we can do, ask the right questions, better than not doing anything.

Because when you ask financial questions to a "Company" or an entity who is asking for finances, they have to answer with real informations, logic informations, give proofs, and simulations for the next 5/10 years. This is how Real companies work.
If i am interested in investing into a company, i have the right to ask for all their financial datas, and the long term and mid term simulations. A scam can't provide these informations without revealing himself because they haven't made their project for long term, so they don't think about it or just provides fake informations who are easily spotable. A 360% ROI/Year is nothing but a scam.

You can't.

Not totally right, you can actually investigate an ico, but without technical knowledge, you should leave as soon as something appears suspicious. If you are not greedy, you can easily avoir been scamed by ICOs.

the best way based on my experience is to stay away from all the new projects that means a big NO to all the ICOs.
let them come and stay around on the market and be traded a little then by looking at their history and the price you can join in and make profit. but in order to do this you need to learn trading. that takes time but it is easier and faster and also more accurate than trying to figure out if a new project is worthy or not specially if it is an ICO!

It's quite easy actually, but thing is that most of the people are blinded by their greed. And what is worse:
1. They may feel that something is wrong, but they may still "invest" if they "know" some profit can be made.
2. "Patience is a virtue" is not something, which applies to 99% of the digital currencies (or whatever asset/token is).

Truth is that 90%+ of the projects are scams. That doesn't necessary mean they will lie to people and disappear, but it may also mean there are insiders in them, speculators, trolls and lowlife bitches whose only goal is to earn more BTC. They may come with the "our coin/whatever is faster and better than Bitcoin" pitch, but at the end that is what they do - cash out Bitcoin and jerk off on their "success".  

Here is how you do it:

Step 1: Go to coinmarketcap.com

Step 2: Avoid everything listed below the #1 ranked coin

Think about it in an holistic way. "What does this coin or project offer that's new and actually useful?" Sometimes, some coins release fancy whitepapers and a lot of technical jargon that ultimately is not used at all by real people. For example, I believe poswallet is a simple idea that doesn't reinvent the wheel, BUT it brings an incredibly useful service into the ecosystem: staking several coins at the same time, something impossible to achieve by yourself.

I believe it is a really undervalued project at the moment.

Always remember that a good project that have a purpose to be scammed someday have a beautiful plans and developments, nice whitepaper, awesome roadmaps, active developers (which majority are anonymous) and anything about almost good. Who will invest in their project if investors saw them as an obvious scam?

So the bottom line here is; you can't verify if the project is legit. The right concern here is, how to minimize the risk when investing in a project. Then you can now applied those suggestions here that will be posted.

ICO's are scammy by design.

Further more due dilligence is not possible.
You said "without technical knowledge"
Exactly.. what did i just say ?

Why are they scammy by design ?

You ICO defenders are fucking idiots period .  ::)

I am not an ICO defender, i just say that some of them are legit, just a few of them.
Let me rework my sentence :

Not totally right, you can actually investigate an ico, but without if you don't have technical knowledge, you should leave as soon as something appears suspicious. If you are not greedy, you can easily avoir been scamed by ICOs.

look if it is an ico, any ico is a bad investment now, the ico hype ended with lisk long time ago, only chose dev who have escrow if he is doing some sort of distribution without ico or choose trusted dev that is not a newbie


lol, it's true that everything here is turned to bitcoin, but some coins have actually a nice roadmap and are a nice project, would be stupid to ignore, bitcoin can lear a lot from these coins

currently new projects ICO Increasingly Profusely popping, they will interesting person with a projects Which is promising, Indeed  ico is a bad investment now because they do not have escrow, wheter ICO still many Enthusiasts seem not.

Nope crypto panhandling is not legit.
I don't care if you think some of the bums in the crowd deserve it.

And escrow ?
What you think they can't be gamed ?

You guys are a lost cause.
ICO = SCAM .

Escrows can't keep the funds, they just release them once the ICO is finished, even if it is a reputable personlity, like Sasha who escrowed some projects, it doesn't means that the ico it self is legit.
You are right on this spoetnik.

what is say, is, if you ever find a single part of suspicious on an ICO just leave it "don't risk what you can't afford to loose" and if you loose, don't complain because everyone is aware of the risks of ICO.

escrow like sebastian are legit 100%, i did a trade with him all perfect. i agree that even escrow can become evil greedy bastard that want to scma you, but it's not always the case, there are many very old escrow here like john or jonattan i don't remember his nick name, which held many bitcoin in the past even 1000 and never scammed anyone, i think the more trustworthy escrow are only the one that escrow a very large amount of funds, like 1000 btc, all the other have still a chance to scam later by building trust

You don't get it, the problem isn't about the escrow it self, because yes, the escrows are trusted, but when they release the funds, these escrows are no longer responsible for their usage. There happens the scam. What ever you say, an escrow never engages his reputation in a project, he is just a middle man holding funds for a short time.

Don't listen to spoetnik, that is rule one

the escrow only release the funds when the partecipants get their coins, i can't see how after the escrow release the funds the people who invested are scammed, this is impossible

Haven't you heard of dumps ? So many ICOs ended like that, when they start, the team is great, they talk a lot, communicate, give some gifts, the escrows are known so people just invest.
As soon as the escrow releases the funds, the first to sell all the remaining premine are the ICO holders.
Or, they just disapear if there is no coin issuance.