Would ICO scene succeed if it was organized like crowdfunding not investing?

[mintme.com]

What would happen if people didn't follow greed and projects didn't promise crazy gains? If this was not main theme of ICO craze, but instead - true and honest support?

If you support someone for example through Patreon - you give him money and you don't really think much what will happen with this money - it's lost for you anyway and you feel good for supporting someone you like.

If all ICOs went that route, sure, we wouldn't see such crazy gains but we wouldn't also see such falls. People supporting projects that would fail would probably don't scream "scam scam!" all the time.

If you give a dollar on a street to someone begging, you usually don't follow him later and check what he bought in a store - liquor or food. Yeah, you are dissapointed probably if you see him drunk next day but you simply don't give him more money.

If ICOs was organized more like that, I think it would be much more healthy environment.

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[poornamelessme]

What would happen if people didn't follow greed and projects didn't promise crazy gains? If this was not main theme of ICO craze, but instead - true and honest support?

If you support someone for example through Patreon - you give him money and you don't really think much what will happen with this money - it's lost for you anyway and you feel good for supporting someone you like.

If all ICOs went that route, sure, we wouldn't see such crazy gains but we wouldn't also see such falls. People supporting projects that would fail would probably don't scream "scam scam!" all the time.

If you give a dollar on a street to someone begging, you usually don't follow him later and check what he bought in a store - liquor or food. Yeah, you are dissapointed probably if you see him drunk next day but you simply don't give him more money.

If ICOs was organized more like that, I think it would be much more healthy environment.

The problem with that mindset is it'd require an imaginary world, where investors wouldn't expect a return of any sort. It'd be like saying stock ICOs would work better if folks considered it a donation to the company, not expecting any profit (or even their investment) back. That's nonsensical.

We can't equate giving money to a homeless person to investing either. It's not like ICOs are charitable endeavors. ICOs work on greed, pure and simple.

And the reason they are failing (besides the whole SEC issue) is that so many projects are scams or are simply bad projects. It also doesn't help much that alts are generally in a bear market.

[Findingnemo]

What would happen if people didn't follow greed and projects didn't promise crazy gains? If this was not main theme of ICO craze, but instead - true and honest support?

If you support someone for example through Patreon - you give him money and you don't really think much what will happen with this money - it's lost for you anyway and you feel good for supporting someone you like.

If all ICOs went that route, sure, we wouldn't see such crazy gains but we wouldn't also see such falls. People supporting projects that would fail would probably don't scream "scam scam!" all the time.

If you give a dollar on a street to someone begging, you usually don't follow him later and check what he bought in a store - liquor or food. Yeah, you are dissapointed probably if you see him drunk next day but you simply don't give him more money.

If ICOs was organized more like that, I think it would be much more healthy environment.

So you are suggesting to make millions from million people for free of cost than investing money to find investors?

It will be still scam if that projects didn't go in the way as promised,better don't listen to them  so no one will lose money and no more scam projects.

[3DBrushes]

What would happen if people didn't follow greed and projects didn't promise crazy gains? If this was not main theme of ICO craze, but instead - true and honest support?

If you support someone for example through Patreon - you give him money and you don't really think much what will happen with this money - it's lost for you anyway and you feel good for supporting someone you like.

If all ICOs went that route, sure, we wouldn't see such crazy gains but we wouldn't also see such falls. People supporting projects that would fail would probably don't scream "scam scam!" all the time.

If you give a dollar on a street to someone begging, you usually don't follow him later and check what he bought in a store - liquor or food. Yeah, you are dissapointed probably if you see him drunk next day but you simply don't give him more money.

If ICOs was organized more like that, I think it would be much more healthy environment.

There are many crowdfunding websites on internet. You can check them out for yourself. None of them raise good amount of money for a project or for an innovative idea. People really don't spend money on something if they didn't get much return. Health/Disease treatment related gigs will raise good amount of money. This is the only exception.

[Anonylz]

I have never come across any ico that promise any crazy gains openly to investors, I don't know where you get that notion from, this grazy ideas was born from the experience of 2017,

ico's where successful because people invested in them willingly without being on any pressure, I bet most project owners back then where not expecting to see such financial support, some couldn't handle it and got greedy, others try to make meaning out of their's,  

Majority of projects turned out to be unsuccessful because there are no genuineness behind them, the teams saw unexpected money that they have no clue what to do with it, well except to squander  

The truth is everybody wants to give and get something in return, nobody will be give away money for what they won't get any back, if people are fed up with ico's because of lack of grazy gains - in your words - what makes you think they will be interested in given away money without caring what they do with it, you are still enriching the project owners nevertheless.

[o48o]

Nothing is preventing people tying to do their crowdfunding through Patreon instead of ico, but i can't see it working on this scene. What's wrong with the ico model that's actually giving people back something? Or at least having a change to get something back.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

The picture painted to the general public is that the industry is an investment platform so the charity or donation suggestion won't had succeeded as it did with the investment mindset. It was the motivation of recieving huge future return that drove Investors to patronize ICOs although none of this ICOs promise huge returns except obvious scams ICOs still Investors had the believe they could benefit from the future price gain as the market was looking very promising back then.

Same fate can be said about IEO, immediately the first batches of IEO recorded success immediately others jump on the trend hoping to benefit. In this space everything is connected, it's like a chain reaction. Without the ICO success, 2017 won't had been a great year for the altcoins. If your suggestion  was the strategy employed, for the first few projects it would had worked perfectly but immediately others see they can profit from the initiative, it would had been hijacked with the mindset of benefiting from future gains just as the ICOs were viewed.

[beerlover]

What would happen if people didn't follow greed and projects didn't promise crazy gains? If this was not main theme of ICO craze, but instead - true and honest support?

Here you got the point. Unfortunately most people are looking for what ROI they may get rather than supporting some innovative ideas to be turning as big project to ease human efforts nor empowering humans to next levels. It is selfish world, people may contribute only on what returns they get in quick time and definitely not based on what project they are going to invest. This is the reasons fake devs promising big returns to accomplish their target money.

If you support someone for example through Patreon - you give him money and you don't really think much what will happen with this money - it's lost for you anyway and you feel good for supporting someone you like.

I may not do that frequently or month once or if with some reasonably big money means yearly once. This way good projects may not get enough funds to work with. They must need to talk about returns for investments to achieve some decent funds which may be sufficient for their project building.

If all ICOs went that route, sure, we wouldn't see such crazy gains but we wouldn't also see such falls.

That route is literally about donations. The real catch is how often and how big that every common man will be ready to donate.

[mintme.com]

The problem with that mindset is it'd require an imaginary world, where investors wouldn't expect a return of any sort. It'd be like saying stock ICOs would work better if folks considered it a donation to the company, not expecting any profit (or even their investment) back. That's nonsensical.

We can't equate giving money to a homeless person to investing either. It's not like ICOs are charitable endeavors. ICOs work on greed, pure and simple.

And the reason they are failing (besides the whole SEC issue) is that so many projects are scams or are simply bad projects. It also doesn't help much that alts are generally in a bear market.

They wouldn't have to get completely nothing in return. They could get lots of things for free, like special account on their platform, some "free" preloaded credits to use their services or something like that. They would get something, just not promise of crazy gains. I can bet most "investors" were thinking they are investing in next bitcoin. They read that it went up from 1 cent to 20 000 USD and they calculated that if they invest 500 usd or 1000 or 5000usd, they will get millions in same way. Even if it was not officially mentioned on most ICO pages, I'm pretty sure most ICO and altcoin investors considered such scenario as realistic, since bitcoin already paved such way. Which was of course naive.

Anyway - If they were donating to a company and company could give them back something in return (maybe exclusive materials same like on on different crowdfunding platforms), they would actually donate less and there would be less "scam" accusations, less dissapointment and maybe truly valuable projects wouldn't have such problems to gather *any* money as they have now.

[mintme.com]

I have never come across any ico that promise any crazy gains openly to investors, I don't know where you get that notion from, this grazy ideas was born from the experience of 2017,

Even if it was not openly mentioned, it was surely a background of 2017/2018 - crazy bitcoin gains, crazy altcoin gains. You want  to tell me it was not a factor when people invested?

ico's where successful because people invested in them willingly without being on any pressure, I bet most project owners back then where not expecting to see such financial support, some couldn't handle it and got greedy, others try to make meaning out of their's,  

no pressure? what about FOMO? you get one time life chance to get rich - is that not a pressure? From whole society, sometimes even family that expects you to succeed no matter what? That's enormous pressure right there, and you get a chance to be rich by investing in next bitcoin early. No pressure?? Huge pressure.

Yes, not North Korea type of pressure with gun pointed at your hand and someone telling you to invest, but also very very strong pressure.

Majority of projects turned out to be unsuccessful because there are no genuineness behind them, the teams saw unexpected money that they have no clue what to do with it, well except to squander  

The truth is everybody wants to give and get something in return, nobody will be give away money for what they won't get any back, if people are fed up with ico's because of lack of grazy gains - in your words - what makes you think they will be interested in given away money without caring what they do with it, you are still enriching the project owners nevertheless.

Probably there has to be some kind of reward promised, but not as high as it was. Even if it was not promised directly, I'm pretty sure 90%+ of investors hoped to get crazy rich.

[magneto]

What would happen if people didn't follow greed and projects didn't promise crazy gains? If this was not main theme of ICO craze, but instead - true and honest support?

If you support someone for example through Patreon - you give him money and you don't really think much what will happen with this money - it's lost for you anyway and you feel good for supporting someone you like.

If all ICOs went that route, sure, we wouldn't see such crazy gains but we wouldn't also see such falls. People supporting projects that would fail would probably don't scream "scam scam!" all the time.

If you give a dollar on a street to someone begging, you usually don't follow him later and check what he bought in a store - liquor or food. Yeah, you are dissapointed probably if you see him drunk next day but you simply don't give him more money.

If ICOs was organized more like that, I think it would be much more healthy environment.

I personally think that it would have never garnered as much attention as it did, especially during 2017 when all of the projects, good or bad, were consistently being hyped up and as a result pumped to heights that were extremely unsustainable.

If the model was shifted from a way to gain easy money to simply crowdfunding, then people won't see the point of it. It will just be another kickstarter, or gofundme even. People will view their money going towards actually supporting the project, which is good, but they'll be a lot more stingy and thus, less demand for ICOs.

It's a good hypothetical to think about, and I think it's the primary reason why ICOs have died down so much these days.

[nelson4lov]

Not sure that's a good idea. You should look at it from the perspective of the investors. Who invests (crowdfunds) in something and doesn't expect a return? I don't know of others but I wouldn't. Crowdfunding in Patreon is more of a donation not investment. And again, what would stop startups from mismanaging the funds/donations received? Also, There's no "guarantee" of the project becoming successful as so much comesinto play from the funding and development phase down to production/deployment to the public.

PS : I'm opened to more people sharing their opinions on this.

[Perfect35]

Those who launch ICOs are most times greedy. Some of them will tell you that they will not stop the ICO until hardcap is reached. That is one of the  norm that killed a lot of them. They also set very high targets for their softcap, which sometimes is unrealistic. Till date ICOs are seen as scam.

[Wysi]

Those who launch ICOs are most times greedy. Some of them will tell you that they will not stop the ICO until hardcap is reached. That is one of the  norm that killed a lot of them. They also set very high targets for their softcap, which sometimes is unrealistic. Till date ICOs are seen as scam.

It's last 18 months that has killed ICO projects and got the label as scam due to greediness of some developers but some really good projects are drowned by the investors themselves by dumping the tokens as soon as they receive it. We need to set some sort of protocols for ICOs or have a rules in this forum for advertising ICO projects by making them go through verification project to avoid scams but that's not practical as well as it will push us towards the centralization. There were ICO projects who achieved their softcaps in hours and completely sold out during the public sale but they ended up with a value just about zero due to poor choice of exchanges. Not all the ICOs are scam but there are various factors which leads to the failure of ICO.

[ololajulo]

Those who launch ICOs are most times greedy. Some of them will tell you that they will not stop the ICO until hardcap is reached. That is one of the  norm that killed a lot of them. They also set very high targets for their softcap, which sometimes is unrealistic. Till date ICOs are seen as scam.

This idea may never come back on hardcap, The loss was much from the ICOs and people had not really recovered, average of 95% from last 2017 ICOs is a big loss. We can rarely see project with product with use case, everyone is disappointed and bitcoin maximalist looks more intelligent, so more money goes to bitcoin now. The only encouragement is the altcoin's young days, we believe altcoin will recover before next cycle and will be healthier.

[X-ray]

Even crowdfunding having its problem facing so many scam project I think that crowdfunding like those happened in another website like indiegogo or such is no better than ICO. There's already a better alternative called IEO that's a lot more legit basically using crowdfuding model is such a waste.
A project will succes if it's a good project it's not about the method of gathering funds even some project that got so much money when gathering funds could become a garbage project anyway and I've seen some crowdfunding that turns out as a garbage aswell.

[CjMapope]

OP, your thinking is why they created DAOs pretty much
what if people could just directly contribute somehow financially to things they support?
Smart contracts can make this possible, but they need to be secure

[bigcash2011]

I do somewhat agree with your post and the point you made, i will add and say that we perhaps lacked a central platform where all the projects would be first scrutinized, screened and filtered in all the aspects and only the projects that pass the minimum criteria would be allowed to raise funds, this way investors could be guarded against scams and poor quality projects and investor confidence would have also boosted.

[stephanirain]

What would happen if people didn't follow greed and projects didn't promise crazy gains? If this was not main theme of ICO craze, but instead - true and honest support?

If you support someone for example through Patreon - you give him money and you don't really think much what will happen with this money - it's lost for you anyway and you feel good for supporting someone you like.

If all ICOs went that route, sure, we wouldn't see such crazy gains but we wouldn't also see such falls. People supporting projects that would fail would probably don't scream "scam scam!" all the time.

If you give a dollar on a street to someone begging, you usually don't follow him later and check what he bought in a store - liquor or food. Yeah, you are dissapointed probably if you see him drunk next day but you simply don't give him more money.

If ICOs was organized more like that, I think it would be much more healthy environment.

That's it, this industry is chaotic and dynamic; it has no standards or regulation so many have ther own way to organize their things. ICOs are organized, but not united nor the people who invest on it. But I don't think that crowdfunding would be always successful to fund the project. Many projects are short lived so it will be ironic to ask for free money for something that will just pass through us. The main problem of ICOs is that there are too many of them, very few are legit and much less are unique. They're like copycats of what's already here in the market that's why not all investors are still interested with ICOs.

[ralle14]

If ICOs was organized more like that, I think it would be much more healthy environment.

If there was a limit on how much people could give out just like on patreon it could be healthier but in a investors' view you can't avoid the mindset of making profit since that's the main reason most of us invest in the first place.Your idea made me remind of the term proof of burning there's an altcoin that makes use of it the way they distribute their coins is slightly similar to this but I haven't checked their current situation.