As I said in another thread about Shift, IMO Shift will be pushed to $1b+ market cap simply by the fact they they will be one of the first, if not the first, dApp platforms to implement Sidechains. This solves for dApp platforms the scaling problem (like DAG solves the scaling problem for currency/store of value tokens). If Shift delivers on sidechains before Lisk, as they plan in their roadmap, then IMO Shift can become the Raiblocks of dApp platforms. Raiblocks is another dPOS-based token that had no ICO and just worked on making the product solid before doing any marketing. There are similarities in the team's philosophy IMO.

The other key factor is that Shift is an entire dApp platform with unlimited use cases (more dApps can be easily developed with Javascript). But unlike other dApp platforms, Shift already comes with a pre-bundled decentralized hosting dApp to help drive adoption of the ecosystem. The website homepage (shiftnrg.org which already as others pointed out is hosted through their web hosting dApp Phantom) explains this "killer dApp" concept of how having a great dApp bundled with the platform will drive adoption of both the dApp itself and the platform's ecosystem by stimulating the development and adoption of more dApps for that platform.

I'm surprised that Shift isn't already $500m+ because the current upside is so huge (i.e. a next-gen all-in-one dApp platform, plus a web and file hosting dApp combined into one), and it will easily go past $1b IMO this year, and this could happen before the end of Q1 IMO.

My prediction is $2b by the end of 2018. The original System Architect of Lisk joined Shift in late December, which should tell you a lot about the merits of the project. Shift is going to be huge. I've been a holder since ~$1 but I'm not selling until at least $1b+ market cap. It's going to happen this year.