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This is a warning to all newbies that seek help from ico rating websites when they are looking for projects to invest money on..

Facts
- You have good money to pay? you will get good rating on the platform, this is the way of ico rating websites
- Good projects can get bad rating on them, and that doesn't mean they are bad project..

For example, you must have been hearing about how successful gowithmi project was right? check out the rating on icobench using the link below.

https://icobench.com/ico/gowithmi

The score is 3.3 where as projects that have better rating turned scam as well, all i am saying is its better to rely more on your own research and not rating.

I believe that the rating is based on how much you pay. If you do not pay, then you will get bad rating, while you give them a lot of money, they will give you super nice rating plus many positive comments from "experts".

You can´t trust any website that requires fee for listing because then the website can´t be independent in evaluation. If you have such website, please, share it with us.  8)

ranking website like that I no longer believe, even you can register it easily on the rating site. a reason why the project is ranked highly because there is money to pay for it. This is purely due to a business website like this. I recommend using a website like this only to see the icon of the project (LOL). do your own analysis or research look for help from fellow members who you believe.
__________
Even many CMC advertisements are scams.

I already know about the website, I am not accusing sometimes there is no honest website in giving a rating on a product, many people need to see the value of their ICO project rating on ICObench and others, they want to invest in that project clearly wrong, I also long ago hope there is an honest website to review each ICO or IEO project especially the strict verification of the project founder, so that they cannot cheat for example video calls and explain about the project in detail

never trust anybody in this digital age , they are all liars.

the fact that the site itself survive is because of there is money talk  :D  , there is a lot of ico with 4.4 rating ended scam and there is an ico with no exposure at all or maybe just get 3.5 rating but the project blow everyone mind!
for example IOST the ico is not listed in some popular platform like icobench but appears to become one of successful ico with real project until now, see the point of this platform? sometimes it could be a true rating but mostly it is bullshit .

the platform making negotiations with the company to determine the rating, easy to guess everyone already know.

Yes I think your reason should not be icobench as the only source of information you have to do the research yourself
I think that some Project pays to have a better rating

Basically every rating or review website on the internet all of them are fake because the rating is based on how much money generated from each project.
do not believe everything you see on the internet because it can be faked, always do your own research.
bot and fake reviews are very easy to be found on the internet lately.

On this site you could always watch new companies, their dates and other information but I was surprised that they earn on ratings. Here it is the crypto industry - trust but verify, and in my opinion this practice is common in many fields of activity.

Ratings can be influenced by expert which requires payment or some tips ( They themselves by be real or scammer) The requirement for becoming an experts on icobench is very unprofessional.

gowithmi was rated only by their team members.

all that does not guarantee that ico will become successful later, at the beginning ico rewardmob get the usual broad attention as a gaming platform, but it is inversely proportional to his expectations. when everyone says it's good, it's not necessarily good and when everyone says it's bad, it's not necessarily bad. I also remember when bitcoin was in the middle of 2017 that bitcoin would die soon because it did not have any function, but in fact at the end of the year bitcoin was rising to the moon. in early 2018 many said that bitcoin would soon be banned by the government, but in fact until now the bitcoin market is still fine.

In essence, we should not take a unilateral decision by looking at only one side, for example icobench where we see an ico rating. it can be trapping, and we also don't know how to rate the ico and how to get such scores.

precisely when we have feelings and choose their own ico without seeing icobench, sometimes that's precisely the right choice.

I never really relied on ICO rating sites for honest rating... mainly due to their centralized nature and lack of real transparency.

By the way, their methods for rating projects may not be effective. There are important factors that are necessary for the grading of cryptocurrency projects. Most probably don't use them.

Everyone wants money,so if someone think that others will help you to earn money then you are just stupid.They will try to make money from you by doing tricks and the ICO ratings are just one kind of strategies used.

That's true and your observation is correct. if you want to invest in any ICO's don't just solely rely on those so called ICO rating website. some of it is not worthy to trust, I was personally experience it on the one project that i was participated during an ICO. it was mark that "team was KYC already" that's why its getting high ratings but it turns into an exit scam. for the better lets try our own instinct accompanied with our own knowledge i think it maybe more positive in results.

Review sites are made to create profit and their business is to fool investors by giving such rates. Serious investors would never depend on any reviews because he know how to read projects and make his own prediction about the project, if you can’t decide on your own then its hard for you to invest big money, rely on yourself always.

I no longer trust ico review sites like ICObench, as many people are trapped by ICObench scores giving it to projects, I think now many projects have their rating on the website because they know it's not right.

Wow, now that's crazy. I didn't know IcoBench couldn't be trusted, they seemed like a legitimate platform. Out of all of my different ICO rating website bookmarks, IcoBench is listed as my first, I guess I hadn't practice my Due Diligence.

I have a question regarding your quote below

You stated that Gowithmi is a "scam as well", yet I couldn't find any evidence to refute your claim, care to provide a source for this information?  ??? I thought it was a successful project?
As for the ICO rating websites, I'm glad you brought attention to them, and how their opinions could potentially be biased  / influenced.

Yes that's a good point,if you are really not knowledgeable enough to analyze the potential of a project in future then you no need to invest on a new crypto project,there are other ways we can make profits which is better way than taking most riskiest kind of investment with no knowledge.

I never trust the rating because I don't think that will be a true review or honest review from the website rating. We don't know if they really give the review based on the project utilities or the goals that the project wants to reach in the future. Sometimes we can see that the rating only based on how much money people can make if they invest in the project and not how the project will work or what the project can give to people. I think that is because the project wants to invite more investors, so they used that way and pay more to the website rating so their project will look better than the other project.

Yes you are right and many are aware about this already, the problem is many new crypto investors still follows them to choose projects and they never learn until they lose, as for me i only use icobench to check upcoming projects either ICO or IEO

personally, i don't think people rely on ico/ieo websites now to pick on what to invest in cryptocurrencies. it is a known fact here that some projects due bribe some of these sites to gt high rating. some even went behind the sense to negotiate with crypto ratting websites because of their traffic. most of these sites are no longer after what some projects offers but rather after there money.
the simple advise i can give to anyone is to wait for such project to appear on an exchange first. give a period of 3 to 6 months before you invest, depending on whether you are a long term investor or a short term

There are some review in some ICO reviews that are too good to be true, sometime you see that they give good feedbacks on alts that sometimes considered scam in these forum or alts that are duplicate of other alts. I don't know what their basis, is it the projects quality or the projects paid advertisement/marketing amount in them.

I become a bounty hunter of one project that has a very high rating IRONX https://icobench.com/ico/ironx it has a very high rating imagine 4.3 but where did investors and bounty hunters get us, we all got scammed here this project is not getting anywhere and they refuse to list their coins to other exchange, and refuse to sell their token to a much lower price.
So you never trust a rating site they are corrupt and when they see the money they will readily give it high rating.

ICObench isnt trusted anymore, most of fake bench by paid from member
investors shouldnt make any investment decision just from it, it is fooled us
read this article would make us know more about this case
This Is How Easy It Is to Buy ICO Ratings — An Investigation (https://medium.com/alethena/this-is-how-easy-it-is-to-buy-ico-ratings-an-investigation-13d07e987394)

I have stopped trusting ico website listings. Most of their articles only contain copy and paste information from ICO project white paper, No one really gave an original review of each article in their publication. They are just like billboards ads on the public market.
And some time ago I found an ico that was listed as perfect point but ended up as a scam, where is their responsibility was to provide fake information.

ico's web rating is no longer objective. they are all paid to make good judgments, so don't be surprised if many shit projects have high ratings. from the start I also doubted if they were all credible in reviewing new projects. moreover there is a lot of information that does not match reality, especially about the duration of tokensales. so forget about the ICO rating website, because this is useless.

Icobench indeed manipulates ICO information.
I have seen many projects that Icobench has served as "successful". In fact, one of these projects disappeared by stealing $ 40 million.
But nobody blamed Icobench for it or made a statement about it.
The name of the project was Brainspace.

Lets be real here, there are no absolute parameter to determine which project will turns out succesful or not even all these ico website are actually just grasping the surface of a project and decide the rating based by that. You need to further analyze the project to be more certain and not just following some measly ico list website that's actually unreliable since they are all money generator for anyone who want to advertise their ico project. Instead, by making an analyzation by yourself you will be able to know and learn about ICO even further and therefore expanding your knowledge.

Ever since last year ico rating sites have been giving wrong judgments about ICO authenticity.  Many that relied on Ico rating sites to invest in ICO are regretting now due to the poor judgement from these ICO rating sites, most of these ico rating sites receive payment from project so that they can give good and proper review about the project irrespective of how scamming the project might be. So to be on the safer side anyone willing to invest in any Ico should noy solely rely on the ratngs from these ico sites buy take out time to make due research on their own

These websites should not be trusted because every ico rating they have here is at the expense of scammers. And because it is their responsibility to rate each ICO they have to put down ICOs that do not pay to them but have low ratings and do not go into too much detail.

like this: https://icobench.com/ico/adbank

It is incredible that newbies are still relying on ico rating websites to tell them if a project is good or not, it has been known for years that those websites accept money to give good reviews and I'll not be surprised if they accepted money to give bad reviews to competing projects, it seems that people forget the reason why cryptocurrencies exist at all, you are supposed to rely on yourself and not in a third party otherwise you will be subject to their manipulations.

You can't get a good investment advice for free from a public platform, it has always been the truth - technical analysis, price predictions, altcoins picks and all other advises that you can get from free sites, they all either worthless or straight up malicious. This is why it's a bad idea to tell people to simply "do their own research" when they are newbies - chances are they will think that reading these ICO rating sites counts as research, not knowing how scummy they are.

it maybe have a bad rating on that website but i guess it has a different rating on the other because not all sites are biased  .its not just about the money but the owner might also be investigating and he gives his own honest opinion if a project is good or no good  . its not bad to open ico rating sites because they also give other infos not just reviews in which you can compare the info easily and save your self the hassel of doing a manual research  .

There were scam accusations ragarding some ICO bench advisors which they were asking 3eth for ratings and reviews. Gowithmi probably didn't pay for it that it only got 3.3  to its rating. This thread is just one example of ICO bench accusation https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5065117.0

I'm not sure either whether gowithmi had been successful today but I can see they were doing good for their investors and the working product is already launched.

This a fact that you should not trust any review sites as they all accept money to be listed and they will give ratings according to the amount of money you are willing to shell out and this is nothing new and it is going on for a few years and so is the reason you have more ICO review sites and some are developed by the prominent scam managers who were promoting these projects.

You are completely right. These rating sites are always mistaken or sell good ratings. You always need to do your own research.

We have all the resources and its free so we can check it out and do our own research about projects, but we still rely on platforms that would give us quick results since most of us wants everything on an instant. There are some that would say that we can read reviews and use it as references but sometimes its still unreliable, as of now companies, businesses, and projects would spend money for advertisements either they would pay people to do a positive review about their service or products, or invest in payingvprogrammers to make bots that will do it for them.

Yes I have been spreading awareness about these useless crypto ratings sites are they are biased and just sell ratings for money and trust me many users gets scammed because of they rely on these sites.  We can just filter the top rated ICO and check how many have redhead exchanges then we will get answer.

I do not know icobench and others, I followed the project based on my own research and not with the site you intended. but by the way, as far as I know Gowitmi was a successful project, many thought at the beginning that Gowithmi was a SCAM but in fact Gowithmi was successful and not scammed.

if you think Gowithmi SCAM, then I'm interested in comparing your biggest income from an ICO project in 2018-209, say now.
and compare your most successful projects with the Gowithmi project.

Gowithmi still doing better, this one was one of the most successful IEO on Gateio launchpad! But Icobench experts gave negative ratings. Seems you are right that icobench only gives a high rating if they project to pay them. I asked about Sero's negative rating in the Icobench telegram group, they started talking shit that it's because of Bot! Seriously! Icobench is a greedy and scammer platform nowadays. Everyone needs to just neglect this site, as the crypto market has many icorating websites!

You are absolutely right, ico ratings site should not be relied upon for better judgment to invest,  I participated in the GoWithMi bounty  honestly I was too hurry to sell, so I miss out when that token did x10 on Gate.io, it would have been my best bounty so far but I didn't use the opportunity well, I thought it was the usual list and token dump kind of project but GMAT was different,
I remember someone ask one of the admins on their telegram group why they aren't in any ico rating sites, and the admin respond we interested in buying rating, it was a clear message.

Ico rating websites are all controlled by humans like you so expect some shady business from them because for humans its always about the money, i was a fool when i always look for good rating projects on icobench but not any more ,thanks

OP is absolutely correct! crypto investors should not depend their judgement on icobench because the ratings can be faked but they can use this as a reference and if you think that the project is profitable then you must conduct a thorough investigation to avoid getting scammed by fake projects. Never rely your decision on a mere rating sites and get more information as much as possible.

I never really believe in those ratings anyways, I always don't even remember to check any project out on those sites, i remember GMAT bounty, did only week 1 and left for another bounty i thought would be better but i was wrong, gmat was a huge success and i really regretted leaving that bounty,
Maybe only newbie will still pay attention to those rating sites.

The way i view icobench its like all good projects have bad rating, if i were you i will focus more on the less rated projects, all projects that are rated over 3.5 are mostly crap

I have never used ICOBench or similar websites to find the best projects, because some of the ICO list in there are endorsement products (they are paid to give good ratings) and the rest are fake ratings. Why did I say "Fake Rating"? As OP said, although some ICO have bad ratings but the fact is that after the platform is launched they can be successful. But on the contrary, platforms that have good ratings are actually scams.

now the project that initially looked good then turned into a scam project. gowithmi used to look promising and looked successful. Even though it's already on icobench.com, it's not necessarily a good project. You can report it if it is proven to be a scam so you can delete it and mark it on icobench. Scam projects must be destroyed.

ICO rating sites do not research the project, look at the project in just 2 minutes and give the value they want. While they try to be the first, they actually screw up their vision. Now I can not prove it, but several times I have seen that they have listed the scam projects. Even, they are so far away from these issues that, although someone gave the opinion about scam project, no one has updated the page. These sites only work to find the names of projects, just trust yourself in the research theme.

All these rating platforms are just a plot to make investors believe the project is a good one since it has been 'reviewed' by experts.  These days ratings are not guarantee of project's success or even team integrity. 

That's like an open secret.  A good rating is not a guarantee that the project is legitimate and promising, as the OP explained, the rating can be manipulated with money.  Initially, I did not believe until I felt it myself when I joined the Hashcard, which had an almost perfect rating with a very promising explanation, but it turned out to be a scam. Since then I no longer use the rating website as a reference and choose to do an independent analysis.

I do not believe in Web ICO rating like that. Yesterday I heard from my friend that the platform is pay to win where there is money rating would be good.
So I could not underlie to analyze the ICO or coin of a rating site like that. And we need to stay alert to the given platform.

http://More rating websites have come into existence with domain names that looks catchy to make people go through and have a glance over different listed projects with schedules of launch. As all of us know, end of the day each and everything is connected with money. Here too same is the fact, in this we cant blame them. They get paid and list it, and it is our responsibility to have a perfect research and do the investment over the right projects.

A high score on the ICO platform revew is not a guarantee if the project is original or will be successful. All can be manipulated with money. Scammers now have a lot of money to pay anyone to look authentic and can drain investors' money.

But for icobench.com, you can report it directly to the telegram discussion group
icobench if the project listing on icobench.com is proven false with some of the evidence you have. If it is proven to be false they will respond and usually in the scam project thread will be discussed more clearly.

Ratings on websites such as ICObench and the like do not reflect good or bad a project. Many projects have high ratings but their performance after entering the market is not good or sometimes many are scam. In my opinion, the research itself is more convincing that we decide to invest, one of which is about partnership

I never believe these ICO "benchmark" "review" sites. Calling it a "benchmark" is extremely misleading since there is no benchmark but rather it comes down to how much you trust the site.
The first thing that rushed to my mind when I first saw these sites was "I bet people just buy good reviews" many of the reviews make no sense and they go on and on and on about things they consider innovative but actually like most ICO are really just empty promises that will crumble under their own weight.

Yes, you're right. We should not really trust rating service providers. Because the ratings they give are not necessarily commensurate with the work of the developer.
At the beginning they were there, I followed their reference, and I have been trapped in the project 3 times that did not provide any benefit. Since then I have not believed in ico rating website. Because there are two different times between the first time listing on the ico rating that the details they can makeup and the second time is where the project is completed during the ico period and the original price is seen in the market and under the guise of the developer.

Those that needs to wise up about this are newbies indeed, many people on this forum knew that ico rating websites are deceiving but what about newbies? i hope this gets to them as soon as possible, some good regulation is really needed in this space, i belief its the only solution to turn to

But the truth is if ico rating websites don't request money for listing and rating tokens how will they survive? money will always be involved because they will never do all that for free

If you are not ready to pay you will never get good rating not only on icobench but all other ico rating websites as well but i found icobench to the the most worst of them all

The only thing that is legit and true on icobench and which is the one reason i am still using it till date is ratings from ICO Advisors, they mostly reveal some weak points in new projects, with their opinion you will be able to see things you couldn't before

in the end they were only reviewers who also focused on business forwarding options. That's actually not wrong because they also can't predict the sentiments of holders and investors. Only appreciating potential and projections, just a kind of initial reputation-forming catalog tool, I chose to be more critical for developers directly to know the actual development.

To me i don't see the reason of these ico rating websites existence, they exist to give investors good info about projects they can invest on but its a shame that money did took over, its better to stick with this forum, its the best place to get good answers

ICObench has been proven as an unreliable means of obtaining info about the project you're about to invest in.

There have been plenty of instances where ICOBench has wrongfully accredited certain projects with verification statuses when in fact later it was found they are running a fake team and project altogether.

So definitely avoid blindly trusting in their analysis. Do your own diligence, because these people are biased decision makers who accept funding from the ICOs that they rate (sort of like what happened in the GFC with ratings agencies like Moodys).

ICO review sites are promotional sites that are paid to create ICO ratings and reviews. If projects have money they can pay for a good review and ratings for their sites for promotion. Investors should rely on their own research and not on ICO review sites.

Icobench and sites like these have lost their popularity, It's mostly IEOs now, Binance, Okex etc.. rule now. I never relied on their reviews anyway. Researching on your own, talking to team members, how they handle things, how they engage with their community etc.. will give you a nice idea of how your investment going to perform. I prefer projects that are more involved with it's community and do rightful.

Even if they told us the holes of the projects, there are still projects that are looking good by looks, but the entire system is faulty, meant to scam and meant to fool people to invest in them. I highly doubt ICO rating sites as they are merely paid websites to advertise and only created for the purpose of gaining money from these projects. If you really want to know how good a project is, take a look at our reputations section on this forum. Too bad we don't have section meant for bounty projects that are scams.

Some projects that turned out so well like Arweave didn't get much if a rating and they turned out to be one of the best projects out there because they have fully developed what they promised in their whitepaper and still even have a very good price for their tokens which is more than I could say for those projects that got up to 4.9 rating on ICOBench, the process has been rigged from the beginning and would continue to be so even though much people don't use those sites anymore except maybe to check token price and such.

Of course. Doing your own research always gives much healthier results.

When I first started the crypto business, I believed in the comments of such sites and traded accordingly. But I soon realized that they were all garbage.

At the same time, with the end of ICOs, sites such as icobench can be destroyed in time.

There is indeed no better truth than this, you said it all and that's the way it is. Being long I realized that these ICO rating sites are just there to fill their pockets and nothing more. If the project is willing to pay they will get good ratings and investors on the other turns out to be victims. Just like you rightly pointed out, the best form of research is the one we do by ourselves not depending on these rating websites before we make a move or invest.

The crypto market is full of manipulations. The rich always try to manipulate the system and take advantage of susceptible individuals to steal from them. That is why you should never invest in a project with huge funds

But seriously anyone still looking at these websites needs to be looked out twice. These ICO rating websites lost their value during the era of ICOs where they will give a good rating to a scam project which points to they are being paid to do such.
I agree with your last statement, let's learn how to do research on our own as it will help us pinpoint faults or questions that needs answers which can be taken to the team for clarification through there Knowing the team's level of experience.

They were debunked even before but still, there are people who are new to crypto's that are relying on those sites of a kind.
Correct, especially in these reviews. The more you pay, the better content and review you'll get from these sites. I think before they were not like this but after getting huge traffic, they've seen the idea and pushed their business for it.

That is how the rating websites work right now therefore their credibility is not that genuine as most of the projects can get a high rating if they can pay a certain amount of money.

So for newbies, don't mind about all the ratings that they display on their website or advertisements of the projects that you want to invest on. Instead dig more especially to the most important part like their partners,credibility of the team,goal of the project and etc.

This is good advice, don't simply invest based on a top rating sites review of an investment opportunity like an IEO or STO always do your own independent research into a project's viability and chance of becoming a profitable investment in the current market climate including competing technologies and their performance

That's the reason why I do not use them as a legit way to inform myself about a certain project if it is good or bad but instead to inform myself about the list of all the projects out there that might have a potential to make me some profit. Never trust those ICO rating sites, they are bias 100%. Well thanks to them I guess that I'm informed about those on-going projects which then I do my own research.

I never trusted ICO rating sites from day one for the simple fact that they are not even decentralised and the ratings are just done by people like me and you whose decisions can easily be influenced by money and this happens to be the case most times, although there a some reputable ones like icodrops, to be honest I basically just use it to check the ICO details and don't waste my time looking at the ratings, I do my own research.

good, 2017 then I relied heavily on ICOBENCH. but for a bounty hunt. in 2017 it was very helpful, I followed the ICOBENCH bounty several times with a rating of 4.0 - 4.5 and the results were very good. but after 2018 until now, that can't be relied on. as you say. Good ratings don't guarantee good projects, and bad ratings may be the best projects. so keep making a personal analysis. check whitepaper, telegram, partner, roadmap, team. it would be better than relying on the ICO RATE web.

at least they participated giving their research results as supporting analysis when investors monitored certain projects, sometimes I even felt more accurate than them because of icobench etc. do not take into account the possibility that occurs when coins can be traded, the rating they write is the same as a book cover with temporary exclusivity.

Don't rely on this kind of website and those ratings ard just fake and they are paid advertiser and trusting them is like you want to spend your money to loose. It would be much better to buy those popular cryptocurrency and trade them.

Trading those popular altcoins and trading is much worth it than investing in an ICOs and waiting for them tk be listed on exchange and less value when you sell them is like a scam to me. That's why i don't invest any more on an ICOs and only joining campaigns that has free tokens.

Is there any website aside from icobench? I guess it's not effective to get good results from them these days. However, investing to any of those promoted projects coming from them cannot be a reliable source of any legitimate one due to some factors like it was paid by most of project developers who've registered to it.
Hopefully there's a fair and honest results who really monitored the actual progress of each project, without any biased information, and I do expect any site who can handle smoothly.

Wow! Thanks for pointing that out.
It never occurred to me that it could really happen.
So, advertising with them is just all about the money too. That is sad.

I guess we should not really rely on this kind of rating which is just their opinion and not the whole crypto population.
Well, there is always a telegram to contact an ICO management. That way it will be more reliable.

Yes, I think this is indeed not too fair, they make a fairly low standard rating for projects that don't pay them, while projects that touch 5 stars there are not necessarily good projects, due to the fact that the project only uses more money to pay for the ICO Listing Site in order to have a good impression on people. I hope that in the future they will be able to set a good standard for each project and not look like a bribe.

Newbie must careful about that, I think not only icobench, most of the ico ratings website is also paid per reviews and high rating to project. I'm only use the ico ratings website to find out the latest ico/ieo project, but won't believe other information, don't trust the  ICO KYC Report, even it's green and pass. Anyway, research project and team member is most important part before start our investing.

There are plenty of ICO/IEO listing sites out there. Some have their own fees for listing while some also states that they are an independent ICO/IEO database.
You can see the lists of ICO/IEO listing sites on this article posted on hackernoon: here (https://hackernoon.com/ico-review-sites-ico-listing-sites-top-100-ico-rating-sites-reviewed-bc8fc1b69888)

It not just paying to get listed, there is also a rumor of those known ICO/IEO advisors and even reviewers getting paid to boost a project/startups rating and make positive reviews.
Bottomline, no one should trust the ratings on these sites. Maybe only use it only as a guide for the upcoming ICO/IEO dates and nothing else.

You are absolutely right! This is what I have been saying over the years. Icobench is another scam platform for crypto investors. Once crypto investors regularly followed Icobench to get a good project for investment, but Icobench started cheating when they get popularity! Not only Gowithme, you may search SERO and Tokoin, both have such negative ratings on the Icobench platform but in reality, both are best projects of this year! But they gave 4.8-4.9 rating to Erestica, Satt and so on the average project! This project should be neglected by everyone. If you need new ICO project information? Use Icodrop, which is far better than shit Icobench!

lurking on them to stay updated ? for what ? it makes no sense to do that if you will not going to invest  but every ivestors that i know are all using ico bench and other ico rating sites to have an idea if what ico is hot or not but we cant blame the rating site because if one proejct fails because their only job is to post the current status of the project that day , but i think its not possible for them to dictate if the project will continue its good performance or not .

Everyone should do their own research before participating in a project. ICO rating websites should not provide you with absolute credibility about the project. Because many projects which have high ratings can turn into scams as before. Therefore, everyone should decide whether or not to participate in a project's pre-sale, based on their own research, not on the ICO rating websites.

I'm not understand which successful that you mean, the gowithmi token price is 0.003 right now when the ICO price was 0.006. So if you're an investor and you invested 100k USD to the project. Right now you will just have 50k which mean you lost 50k. I'm not defending the icobench website cause i never that websites to research an ICO before i invested in. But i also not aggress with you because you said that project was a success and 3.3 is not worth the rate

Right, because I personally use the ico rating website only to see the latest projects posted there, not for investment references, because after I find projects on the site, I always make further analysis to find out that the project is worthy of being followed or not.

I often use icobench.com as research to check full information about ico. high scores make people interested in joining. But it is not impossible that the project is in fake icobench and cheats many people. But as far as I know icobench has high credibility compared to other reviews. if a project that is in icobench deceives many people, it can be reported so that it is immediately deleted and acted upon. so that not many people are fooled again.

ICO/IEOS our pretty much dead anyway .Their was money in 2017 .Now it just a front for money laundering no legit investors our retail investors left in the market .All the numbers are fake of what projects raise now

I have nothing to show that I don't rely on Icobench. I don't follow any rating after saw counting house project and here Growithni is very good example. This is my prove, I didn't follow any icobench rating. My research always choose campaign without focus rating.

You should only rely on yourself and not on other resources like these. Conducting a research and evaluating a project is a do it yourself kind of thing. You should do a background research about the members of the team of the project to see if they are eligible to be in that project and also verify if they are really in a certain project because some ICO/IEO are grabbing someone's identity to fool the investors.

It was last year when these ICO rating websites had been busted along with the other bounty managers. because of their greed, they accept the payment of scam ICOs and make a nice rating and review about it. with the managers who are gone astray, there were a lot of investors who lost their money due to this scam method. that's why ICO rating sites are no longer reliable or trusted nowadays.

Ratings coming from ICO rating sites are now garbage. But I have to admit that I used to be one of those who rely from their services. It started as reliable. ICO rating sites were even mentioned in the ANN threads of crypto projects. They are even mentioned in their websites, social media sites, and other promotion platforms because they are proud of it. But then it somehow changed ways later and apparently started to accept bribes. It was obvious in many cases involving scam projects that have high rating while the legit ones got very low scores.

If you don't even do an analyzation or study about that, it's better for you to say based on how much your knowledge about that. That's happened when someone is picking the icos from the unreliable ico rating site like icobench. When it comes to reliable sites like icodrop and that will have different results as the output. look at the history of both, and you will know the differences.
No one is forcing you to believe in the crap ico rating site. Still, we are suggesting everyone just try to follow the reliable website that has already proven its credibility.
Those crap ico rating sites will always be aiming to get money whatever how much money they get from the developer as long as they can still operate their crappy site and they will keep manipulating the ico rating.

People just need to be a smart person to put anything based on others review about that site.

What many investors do not understand is that most of those rating platforms owners are paid for the works they do. The more you pay, the more you're rated is the game.

all this time I thought that the score on the web like icobench or others is a score that illustrates how reliable a project is. but all of that turned out to be based only on money. since the beginning of 2019, I have stopped believing in such scores and started doing my own research on the project concerned. I advise people not to depend on that score, and do their own research.

Yes I agree with you I see a successful project but the rating is low from other projects that do not even list in the market.
I think that's because they don't pay as much as the high-rating project.
So I started to be suspicious of Icobench, does this apply to all ICO site reviews? Or are there still true real, impartial on high payouts and very transparent?

IcoBench websites like that cannot guarantee ICO scams or not because websites only provide ratings and dare to make ICO lists if they pay a bitcoin to be listed on IcoBench meaning they bribe them and there is no pure, better you should be able to be careful when participating in an ICO.

Don't completely believe those websites because previously I worked on the bounties listed there in ICObench, most of them are getting into the scam without any developments after raising the funds. I don't know why they are giving a good rating and suddenly the companies are disappearing without any development activity.

I would not have much to give credence to the rating sites after many reminded. and this thread is a reminder for me that I should really do my own research, and don't be afraid to try because experience will increase if you keep trying to do your own research

Agree, indeed we should not rely on ratings based on ratings on the website. If we do our own research, we will be able to better understand the projects being carried out and also the team behind them. There is a certain satisfaction when the project that we analyze is able to make a profit

this website is a good way of monitoring ICO way back 2017 and there are so many successful project you can see there before. The problem start   in 2018 when the rating they give to a project is  base on the money given to them not base on legitimacy of the project . 

UPDATE: i just learnt that projects on ICOBENCH with good ratings from advisors are easily tampered by ICOBENCH team, for example, if a project get good rating from ico advisors but failed to pay the icobench team they will remove all the good ratings of the ico advisors and leave the bad rating only, i think we should stay away from icobench, they are disgusting

I have never for once in my life really relied on ICObench because I have ever knows that there is no way they can offer free service of rating some project based on merit without getting anything in return for it. There are lots of project that I have seen them promote or rated high that I am sure lacks the merit that is needed to rank the project as top.

At the same time, because of probably the registration fee they have paid for having access to them, they will rank them and make them look like they are the best projects in the market and checking the history of most of the project that has been released through them, we will see that most of those projects are among the project that has dump so hard and I don’t think that they ever have any future with them again.

but i haven't found that fact that icobench is like that. but the fact that there are projects that fail despite being listed with a good rating on icobench. don't assume but if it's true I want to know if the site is concerned with money to give a good rating for a project that is not good

It is really sad to know these circumstances because new comers have nowhere to go or to rely on where they could put their trust on what projects are no scam. Crowd sourcing sometimes isn't good as it loaded by personal opinions contradicting into each other that results into indefinite claims. Searching out in the internet particularly in icobench are a paid up platforms that as well lead to scamming. That these thing lead to higher chance of new comers getting scammed.

Sure, everything is paid on rating website, even when you are searching for projects there is always a banner with a discount for listing on ICOBench. 2 BTC and your project will get an insane rating but will fail to develop or even to collect enough funds.

Funnily enough, reviewers in ICObench are repeatedly caught soliciting their positive reviews for ICOs and icobench does nothing. AFAIK a positive review from some of the top ones would start from 50$, going upwards to god knows what with perks added like becoming a project advisor. Some were speculating that ICObench had created these personas of reviewers to skim some cash from foolish project managers.

You're right GoWithMi project is making developmental progress despite having low hype. Icobench doesn't really rate depending on how much money paid. There are various criteria to be met such as kyc if members of team and others but in all I don't trust any online opinion I see I make up my mind for my own investment choices.

Yeah, it just goes to show that not all project that are hyped unnecessarily can get the job done, I could say that only few people actually know about GowithMi when they host their bounty here, I think people can put this into consideration when making a decision on which project to support and invest on, we should do more research than just viewing ico rating sites.

Can you give the results of what you say? to reinforce that there is a game behind the scenes. this is a big problem and needs to be investigated further, if the site is right like that many people will be deceived and I think this is like a trade monopoly.

Gladly, this ico bench don't make headlines for me anymore in terms of investment research choices since I found out that they failed a good team because the team refused to part with some money which they consider too high for rating. I am a sure it's same for all rating sites including ICOdrops, your money buys the ratings

such a ranking is no guarantee that the project will be successful and I also see that ranking is not trusted because they can now pay to get the highest rating and therefore everyone must do their own research in determining project, because dependency will not make you develop for the better

It is all about to take a money from the team and give their project a higher score on ICO benchmark sites. I don't pay attention to the ICO benchmark sites and the obvious reasons destroy both the reputation of project and project. Before making an investment, taking into consideration the market conditions, the reliability, trustworthy of the project is important.

Ratings can't be trusted even though it was having good ranking. I am looking forward to a clear transparency, who gives definite and honest ratings and I don't see any promt and trusted sites who monitored the progress of each projects. Wave back two years ago, I experienced one project which I participated and they're showing progress of their ICO behind it's ongoing sale.

THis year exposed most of the atrocities from the ICO rating sites. SEC had been going after some of them that even have personnel in the USA. There are revelation of how they collect fund and have allocation of token from projects. Also, their so called rating professionals are influenced financially and even provide some advice on deceptive strategies to sway investors. They neglect good projects even with proves of authenticity and credibility and flood their website with so many scam project with bloated ratings. Some will delete scam project on early notice  and try to dissociate from them whereas they were instrumental to the advertisement

Well if that's true then that's really shady of them. what they care is about the money going into their pocket not their visitors's money to be safe. such website should be taken down because their listing could simply mislead people and such website have literally no use anyway since it's manipiulated basically a rigged website. Maybe if there's a proof to this you can make a topic just to expose their shitty website so that people could know that this website is just a measly money grabber.

Compared to the year 2017, ICO and IEOs are actually not over. Only the fraud ICOs are over.
There are many reasons for this, but I think the AML and IEO process provides this opportunity.

For rating websites, money is the most important. If they prioritize their rating reputation, I think they will stay alive from advertising because the cryptocurrency community continues to grow. But they prefer shortcuts so that many people doubt their review so that many new projects that are actually good cannot reach the sales target

Yes you are right, this is one of the big disadvantages of icobench which has to also do with some other ico rating websites. The so called rating professionals are manipulative this means no one can be really trusted, even the so called professionals

Professionalism and reliability are simply not synonymous of one another.

You can have the most professional looking site with the best staff or whatnot, but if your business model was based off giving biased reviews and taking a fee for doing so from the get go, then there is really no positives from being professional alone.

ICObench is one of the better ones, there are other more notorious ones out there.

True though. Most of the ICO that are fraud ended up exposed within short amount of time nowadays since people have learned from the past quite different to back in the days when even a 12yo could make an ICO and get away with it.
Currently the complicated process of partnering with popular exchange for IEO is indirectly contributes to the elimination of fraud ICO and decreasing their motivation because most of people nowaday prefer IEO anyway. But, there are also some legit ICO aswell, can't generalize something like that.

There's still projects around the market that have potentials and still moving ahead, it's difficult to find it that quick since there' a lots of
scam projects that you need to consider before picking the right project to invest your money. Same with how the OP stated, it's always
best to rely with your own research and not to base your decision with others opinions especially those paid site who gives ratings they
are bias since they are receiving money from developers who wanted to be on top.

They are literally selling their reputation for a measly amount of money and in this case they are planning to have profit for short time if that's really the case.
The reason of such ico directories website existence is to provide reliable information that didnt mislead people so that people could analyze it by themselves.
If such practice is allowed and no one bats an eye it's as good as having nothing because with nothing atleast you wont be misled.

when the ico fraud is very much going on, of course good investors will correct their mistakes, and therefore they will be more careful in analyzing the project. With the advent of IEO, at least it creates a new world for investors where it is safer to invest in IEO projects, especially for large exchanges

I don't really look as icobench or any other related ico rating sites for anything because they have posed to be more or less useless and high rate of manipulation. I do my research on a project myself without referring yo any of those sites

I am no longer believe websites that give ratings like icobench, I already know that rating on icobench should pay but if there are projects that are really good why should the rating be made bad. If only they could do fair, which good projects need to be highlighted (free promotions) and paid promotions for projects that need a reputation. maybe icobench's reputation won't be as bad as it is today. And unfortunately, their business is not far from money, money means rating.
from now on leave all websites that give fake ratings. better, do your own research.

True, indeed the ICO rating website cannot be trusted, a lot of websites are paid for giving high rates even though the project is ugly
My advice if you want to invest in a project, do not look at how much value is given by the rating website, it's better to find out for yourself, it will be more satisfying

I agree if we do not rely on analysis on website ratings. Maybe we can make it as a second opinion but the most important thing is the research that we do ourselves. The team developer is the key is the key to the success of a project and in my opinion doing research on the team is important to do

The ICO bench way back 2017 is very popular in terms of their review and the details of those new projects as well as their white paper, road maps and lastly the possible value of their tokens. In fact, I definitely trusted the ICO bench apps looking for more updates on those highly potential projects and I'm so lucky on that time since the project that I choose was successful.

Nowadays, as those scammers become rampant in the world of crypto currency the ICO bench that I appreciated before become untrusted and become so negative feedback from everyone else here, in which those user doesn't trusted anymore the ICO Bench.

Waw! this is quite some handy information, i never new the situation is this bad, i mean i know that most of the ratings in this sites are mostly influence but never new they could go this length to deny a project the opportunity of a good and honest rating, i think it is best people understand this and make their own decision when they want to invest, ico ratings site information should be properly checked before investment.

many people do not check anything because they trust such sites. sites are large and they have a lot of traffic and people think that there can be no scam because the site has a reputation.

That shortcut will surely ruin their reputation if that allegation turns out be true but we don't have any proof yet though. Such a thing is why I always avoid ICO directories website because they are just rigged website and made for sole purpose to generate money and nothing more than that. they even dont have the initiative to atleast interview some of the ICO listed in their website.
Those website are literally made effortless and just copying each other even there are so many similar website that shove list of ICO into our vision with literally the same database.

Even if you are right at the same time I would expect better of the people investing in cryptocurrencies, even the most superficial knowledge about this market will tell a newbie that this market is about decentralization and not relying on a central authority to tell you what it is right or wrong, and yet when it comes to decide in which coin to invest they rely on a website that is centralized and that has all the wrong incentives to accept bribes in exchange for better ratings.

Indeed!  Icobench and other rating site is paid website I mean in order for you to get a high rating or good feedback you need to pay them, about 3eth I think and then you need to find and pay some advisors too so that you can add their names in that icobench site, I knew this one because I have a friend that tries to open a project and he wants to have icobench rating. All of them needed a payment for them to give you stars.

very true because if we too trust the ico rating site the results will not be too good, and now I believe more in what I see in choosing projects not to depend on ico rating site because many of ratings they give are based on money because I am sure many projects are not good and pay them to give a good rating maybe above four even five stars

Yes, that's true, but people now approach ICOs with prejudice, including me.

Just because a project offers an IEO doesn't mean the price of that project will be doubled, but it does mean you will not lose "all" of the money. In this respect, I find IEOs much more successful and reliable.

And I don't think I will invest in any ICO after that.

sometimes relying on a ranking website does not determine the success of a project. we can see if there are so many projects that fail or scam. research itself gives us confidence and also how it affects our profits. so in my opinion the analysis and research itself will be better than anything

Well these ICO review ratings site are always paid to promote fake reviews and ratings just to say their the coin rated and reviewed by the site legit and to attract investors to steal their money and run away. if i were you, just rely here on bitcointalk there are alot of scam ICo/IEO scams are being exposed here everyday and always be careful on investing on something .

Bitcointalk is offering a lot of information about the new projects. Some members are even reviewing the project's whitepaper and team members to make sure that they are legit and not just copy-pasted or stolen from other resources. But I recommend to use all available resources to know whether the project is good or bad. It is also better if you personally will do the reading and researching.

I do not trust ICOBENCH anymore to give me recommendation about where to invest my money, they are inaccurate in giving recommendation on what are the best ICO to invest, but still, subscribe to their newsletter because of their market reviews, I'm doing this for comparison they looks good at it but not when it comes to ICO.

I agree with you, I also found many projects that indicated scams and bad ratings, but in the end said it was different.
quite the contrary, the project went well and was successful. In the end, I made a personal decision and began to follow my heart and feelings.

I think people are much wiser now, good thing such information are been made open to the public so that many can have a better idea about what is actually going on in this rating sites, back in 2017 many people rely on this sites to make decisions to invest on any project, but most of this highly rated project did not meet up to expectations, now with all this news comping about rating sites, many people understand now that they are not the best way to get information to guide the decision to invest. 

"Not"  every thing what we see or hear in internet is fake or scam. There are some websites and and projects which are scam. First of all people go by good ratings but actually the thing is they get paid by experts for good ratings.

In this digital world should be more careful and do there own research and check out the projects or websites is scam or not.

In Digital world can't rely on anything may be icobench or other things.

Yes people go by rating only so do research by yourself.

Yep! Because what I have thought before, they are paid for advertisement and for giving a high ratings in every projects, in order for you to got 5stars or 10/10 you need to pay them little bit higher for every months they will advertise your project. And there was a rumor that some advisors there that gives low and bad feedback if you want to remove that or give you high rating you should pay them, and it is not good for a potential project.

Nowadays money is the basis for you to be number 1. Because if you have no money no one will accept you to become friends and only a few of your true friends can be trusted. This is similar to what is happening today in ico campaigns because they buy their rating to be number one. So it's better now that we shouldn't rely on ico rating websites, and we should know what real ico is yet to be trusted.

That makes sense. After all, this guy also has to do business and make money. If icobench will not ask for payment in exchange of rating, how is it going to sustain? To avail a service, we need to pay first. But the payment is a high one. All of the businesses have same way of earning money. They can manipulate stuff so ask money in return. Anyway, best of luck to your friend for his project and ratings.

The majority of smart investors never trusted icobench and we can try to see that through the traffic of the icobench itself. Some may very accurate just like icodrop but other than it like icobench could not be created since it was created. When the popularity of icobench increased a little bit and icobench has started to convert it into the money.

Speaking of the truth they could still sustain through their banner but it wont make that much profit. The bribing is what makes their wallet and although that practice is wrong in so many ways they are still doing it for the sake of profit. Guess what, that alone could actually explain the recent trend of ico list that are sporadically spreadout across the internet.
The only thing that make it unfortunate is probably the fact that there are no people who wants to provide a platform to expose such practices to the public and that's why their reputation is untouched even after doing such practices.

Unfortunately if something like that is not stopped, it will be a massive burden for the people here. Imagine an ICO rating website is giving 5 stars out of nowhere to fake project and ended up scamming so many people meanwhile the ICO rating website can just get away with the money.

You need to research more before trusting anything, even there's good reviews you can't relied on it. It's all about money and most of those review sites
are receiving payments so they will have good place from the sites. It's unreliable so best to have your own ways to research and assess everything regarding to the intentions and the progress of the project before supporting. The whole process will be in your own observations and not with anyone else.

And this is not only problem for icobench or any other similar websites, this has been a problem for review sites of all kinds for a very long time, it is obvious that they would like to give fair reviews about the icos in the market but they need to have a profitable site and that makes them susceptible to be bribed, and icos want to get the best review possible to attract the most investors and most developers have no problem paying for it, taking all of this into consideration it is better to never rely on those websites when you are deciding in which coin to invest.

I really like your point of view, some crypto enthusiasts depend solely on ICO rating websites when deciding what token sale to participate in without doing Personal due diligence. Checking these ICO rating sites when doing research is OK, since it helps one know some facts about the project, but it shouldn't be your "decision maker". It's irony that some projects which got 5.0 ratings on ICOBENCH still failed over time, this should let us know most of these ratings are paid ratings.

This is true and with no iota of doubt whatsoever, those rating websites has caused more harm than good. Most of these scam ICOs really passed through their website and investors believed thus investing. It's been long I learnt that truth and stopped using their website for anything whatsoever; I now bank on what I know about any project before putting my funds, at least am now responsible for my risks and investments.

I don’t even open rating sites. Rating sites a long time ago become terrible. maybe a few years ago you could find useful information on these sites, but now it's just a trash can.

I'm glad that you realized the truth and you stopped trusting in those useless rating websites, I have always found interesting that people that do not know anything about investing try their luck in this market which is so difficult to predict and the only way they have to tell whether or not a coin can be a success in the future are those rating websites, this is the equivalent of taking financial advice from someone that you do not know on the street and then following that advice.

Some projects have certainly approached several websites that do provide information about the ico project, so, I think the rating is no longer purely an analysis of the website, of course ico developers will not hesitate to pay a website to increase the popularity of their project, and to make it easier attract investor interest to invest and I strongly agree if we and other investors do not make a rating on the website as an excuse to invest without our analysis of the that ico project.