What is the first sign of a scam project (ico) for you?

[nunchuck master]

As stated in the topic, what is the first thing that makes you raise the alarm?

[1715569269]

1715569269

[Mihaylovic]

Team is the most important thing. There should be at least one known and real person in the team.
Fake names, fake photos, fake titles are the first signs for me.

[John Titor]

Honestly better to look for signs that an ICO is NOT a scam, than the reverse.  Good ICO's are like a needle in a haystack.

Usually the very fact that there is an ICO is enough for me to write a project off completely.  I will make exceptions only if they demonstrate clear innovation, and the ICO is done in a fair and transparent manner as well.  An example would be Komodo; you got a reasonable amount of coins in exchange, the ICO lasted several months, BTCD conversions are accepted for a full year which is still going, and they overall did a solid job of advertising for it.  Still not ideal, but I have enough respect for their team that I am willing to overlook it.  Another one is Bitbay, which stood at less than 1/3 of its relative bitcoin ICO price for the better part of 2 years with a market cap sitting at $100k-$300k USD, everyone had good opportunity to get in on that one early.

I will also say that devs using their real identities is generally a plus, but sometimes they scam anyway, and sometimes anonymous devs stick around longer.  @jl777 I feel I can take a chance on because he has been here for years, if he was going to cut and run he'd of done it by now;  @Smooth is another good example of that (though I believe he has shared his identity with other devs, but I don't remember well enough to be certain.)

[Patatas]

As stated in the topic, what is the first thing that makes you raise the alarm?

Bunch of things,
 -> Self Moderated Threads + several bounty campaigns with a broken English speaking campaign manager.
 -> ICO appearing out of the blue moon with a non-newbie account with a team that is hired from bitcointalk.
 -> Cheap ICO page with a bought script and a bootstrap theme.
 -> Another POs shitcoin with no creative idea behind.

[NorrisK]

What is the product they are offering? Does using blockchain. Actually make sense?

Tons of icos use blockchain simply to raise millions.

Also, the team is very important. I'd they are known in the scene it is generally more likely that they will not scam you (remember, the project can still fail!)

[brokedummy]

For me first sign is that they want me to send some of my valuable well known established currency in return for some worthless token that they created out of thin air.

[adzino]

Teams which have shitty developers and hides their real identity are the ones which cannot be trusted. You might also see some aggressive advertisement/campaigns to promote their ICO and rewarding users with insane bounties. Failing to demonstrate their project properly and being able to not show how much they are going to succeed is another typical sign of shiity ICOs.

[Patatas]

Teams which have shitty developers and hides their real identity are the ones which cannot be trusted.

I don't think so ? I mean no one knows Satoshi/creator of bitcoin ? Doesn't make him a shitty developer right ? As long as the idea is right and the code is open-sourced with an active development team,identities doesn't really matter.ICO come along with their own risks anyway.

You might also see some aggressive advertisement/campaigns to promote their ICO and rewarding users with insane bounties. Failing to demonstrate their project properly and being able to not show how much they are going to succeed is another typical sign of shiity ICOs.

Yeah,the like I said,ICO which hire broken English speakers from bitcointalk to manage their bounty campaigns are the ones who clearly have no future.

[Grant Hero]

Here are my red flags (no particular order):

-  Anonymous Team  ie.  FuckToken
Is anyone comfortable handing over money to someone they have never met, seen, or heard of before?

-  Inexperienced Teams
I prefer to see teams and developers that have been in their respective industries for years.  Startup and corporate experience are very important here too.  

-  Fake Profiles
Integrity is perhaps the most important trait for me personally.  Once that is betrayed, it can't be recovered.

-  No Prototype
Teams with no prototype give me a good indication of a team's ability to execute and gain traction.  It doesn't require much time to develop a proof-of-concept for any demo.  And quite frankly, every team should be required to prove that they can sweat and hustle (in a short period of time) before trying to raise millions on the open market.

-  One Person Companies
Self-explanatory

-  A large number of team members and advisors  
This scares me for multiple reasons.  First, I always laugh when a startup has no prototype but displays a large team of employees and advisors.  Additionally, teams can not be efficient at the startup stage with both.  Having a large team increases payroll and operating expense.  If a team doesn't have a product or prototype, a large team is not going to be efficient in the early stages of the company.  The same goes with having a lot of advisors as the leadership team will be pulled in many different directions.

-  Quick ICO Timeline
Everything that is worthwhile in this world takes time.  Companies that drum up an announcement, website, and try to ICO in short period of time are always questionable.

-  Questionable ICO Terms
If a team is raising an large amount of funds despite not having a product or vision to accompany the raise amount, that is always questionable.  Additionally, if the token distribution favors the founders versus the investors.

-  Solution vs. Problem
If a team isn't solving a problem with a large pain point across many people, it is likely to not have a lot of impact and potential.

-  No Clear Roadmap
A team should be able to articulate the results and direction for the company the last six and next six months, respectively.  If not, then they haven't done the necessary diligence to plan and succeed.

[klarki]

If they refuse to conduct an ICO through an escrow.

[Patatas]

If they refuse to conduct an ICO through an escrow.

Well,there have been cases where ICO's scammed even they used forum's trusted escrows.Money never arrived on the escrow addresses after the 2 days of the ICO. Whatever they managed to raise in a day or two was wiped away.There have been ICO's which were successful without forum's escrow too and they did manage to raise a few millions to reach the goals.I could give you examples but I'm pretty sure you know their names.

[jameshowlett]

Check the team. Most of the information comes from the team and you can easily recognize scam ICOs by analyzing each members of the team in order to find information about them. There are too many ICOs around and you have to check them carefully before making your decision

[Grant Hero]

If they refuse to conduct an ICO through an escrow.

Well,there have been cases where ICO's scammed even they used forum's trusted escrows.Money never arrived on the escrow addresses after the 2 days of the ICO. Whatever they managed to raise in a day or two was wiped away.There have been ICO's which were successful without forum's escrow too and they did manage to raise a few millions to reach the goals.I could give you examples but I'm pretty sure you know their names.

Agreed.  Escrows aren't a requirement for me either.

I'd actually like to hear more about startups using a paper wallet to accept funding in order to ensure security.

[Bellator]

As stated in the topic, what is the first thing that makes you raise the alarm?

If the ico has a lesser updates and announcement for the people. And if the ico has a big target price but it only gives a small amount of bounty to us. I dont know i only believes in my instinct.

[Seansky]

As stated in the topic, what is the first thing that makes you raise the alarm?

The first thing that makes me raise an alarm that an ICO is scam is when the idea is shit and not feasible at all. Also, sometimes the site they have, the ICO platform, is a sign if the project is scam or not. If the site hosting is very cheap, there are chances that the project is a scam. Lastly, if the ICO dev lacks public relation, it will later on result into a PR problem and might eventually scam people.

[ironm@n]

Being an ICO does not mean that it is a scam. I think the main thing to look at is if the project has attainable goals, and if they have competent developers to achieve those goals.

[Spoetnik]

First sign ?

..it's an ICO

[MFahad]

The first sign for me is its appearance on this forum by a Newbie. The second is somebody comes on here touting the wonderfulness of their particular project it's probably because they want and need money. If they didn't want need money than they would come out make an announcement close the thread immediately and leave it there like that but they don't do that they leave it open because they want people to beg for information they want people to ask questions and that creates new activity which then creates new money for them if they play their cards right.

[MadPanda]

Ask your self this...
1) Is there product realistic?
2) Do the Devs have a face?
3) Does the team check out? ( Linkden,Facebook,Twitter)
4) Do they have a road map?
5) Is the project active? Are they active on social media?

[Antikais]

first:idea.i saw realy meaningless projects like dating.cryptocurrency and dating? why ?
second: is their roadmap realistic?
third:team and transparancy