We've learned a lot of things about how not to do an ICO, but I don't think the model is fundamentally broken. The idea of getting to a situation where the network carries itself by the weight of so many people supporting it (like Bitcoin) I think is very powerful.
The thing that's happening with ICOs today is that we're skipping steps, over-valuing things, and making impossible promises. The largest ICOs also tend to handwave away some very substantial, long-term research problems that the general audience they are pitching to has no awareness of.
Teams get put in a position where they raise 5 years of runway with rapid growth all at once, pre-product, pre-traction. That's not a problem with the ICO model, that's just a function of the space being extremely overheated.
The thing that's happening with ICOs today is that we're skipping steps, over-valuing things, and making impossible promises. The largest ICOs also tend to handwave away some very substantial, long-term research problems that the general audience they are pitching to has no awareness of.
Teams get put in a position where they raise 5 years of runway with rapid growth all at once, pre-product, pre-traction. That's not a problem with the ICO model, that's just a function of the space being extremely overheated.