Hi guys, I want to share with you my simple methodology (beta) of spotting ICO scams.
The methodology
There are criteria with various risk points. Summarize all the points of the criteria that the ICO meets to get total score. Total score represents a risk grade on which you can lean to take a risk or not.
Scam points and criteria:
1 point: minor suspicions (for each)
3 points: anon devs; no code snippets, videos, or beta; rushing
5 points: unrealistic goals; fuzzy whitepaper; self-mod topic
10 points: bought account; no escrow
Risk and total score:
low (0-5)
medium (6-10)
high (11-15)
very high (16-20)
extremely high (21 and more)
Example
Let's imagine there's an ongoing ICO of Supercoinxxx in which you want to invest some money.
The topic is self-mod (5 points) with devs that have unrealistic goals (5 points) like creating a decentralized stock market in 2-3 month and a fuzzy whitepaper (5 points) with no technical details. Also you found two minor suspicions (2 points) based on your experience. Which gives 17 points in total. Based on that score you conclude that risk is very high and skipping this ICO.
Updated: added "no escrow" criteria.
That's really useful for me when dealing with an ICO. I think no escrow, too much tokens held by the founders and less discussion on this forum are enough for me as a reference not to give a shot to this ICO.
Maybe your opinion is very reasonable, from here if you want to see the ICO project is a fraud, because from here it seems that he does not use escrow and manager if there is an ICO project like this that I think you already know so you do not have to participate in it. To invest in this ICO because it is clear, that this is a fraud.