ICOs of 2017 is like NFTs of 2021. Mostly pump and dumps.
Simple and easy answer. Good to see that at least some people in this forum have actually been using their intellect properly.
Know the people behind them. It is critical to know the nature of the company and the teams behind ICOs. ...
Team is good but even then the coin can fail because of advisors dumping their tokens, which is typically the case when their lock in period ends. The investors never know this and they think the dump was due to bounty hunters. The reality is different, but it is easy to blame the hunters.
Go for disruptive concepts. ...
Rarely, my friend do such concepts actually happen to crypto. They would rather go with the mainstream IPO market.
Evaluate the technology. ...
Nitpick the white paper. ...
Know what the coins are for.
Most retail investors cannot evaluate properly, though this is not their mistake, it was never their job in the first place. However going through whitepaper will never give you the actual idea of what the project is doing. Today it is very easy to copy paste a whitepaper or modify a copied whitepaper to fit your project. Whether it will deliver or not, is a different thing.