There are no promising projects, all new coins are just copies of existing ones, thousands of projects have already promised to solve all the problems that Bitcoin has or bring some new features, yet no one has actually achieved that. Almost no one actually uses altcoins, especially those that are below top 20. If some talented people are actually interested in decentralized systems and peer to peer networks, they should be working on expanding Bitcoin, adding features like sidechains and smart contracts to allow Bitcoin to deliver promises made by other coins. It's better to have one coin secured by all the PoW in the world and thousands of nodes that can do everything, rather than have hundreds of small, unsecured and specialized networks.
All the new projects are just reinventing the wheel by promising of solving the problem that has existed for a long time yet each day new ICOs are arrriving claiming to be world first in what has existed before. It is greed that is forcing men to stand in the shadows of bitcoins yet adding nothing new.