I tend to evaluate on two criteria: a thorough, deep analysis of the whitepaper, and by the team who created the whitepaper.

If neither stand up to scrutiny, I abandon ship. Not worth the time investment when there are so many other interesting teams doing cool stuff in the space.

HackerNoon -- https://hackernoon.com
HackerNews -- https://news.ycombinator.com
r/CryptoCurrency -- https://reddit.com/r/cryptoCurrency/
Princeton cryptocurrency course -- http://bitcoinbook.cs.princeton.edu/
Going to coinmarketcap and reading about every top coin -- https://coinmarketcap.com

This amazing blockchain/cryptocurrency reading list -- https://a16z.com/2018/02/10/crypto-readings-resources/

Reading everything by Satoshi Nakamoto (Bitcoin), Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum), Daniel Larimer (Steem), etc. Watching all the YouTube videos from the Ethereum Foundation.

I have a lot more, PM me and I can brain dump further, if interested.