Almost every ICO to date has been effectively a VC investment (i.e an investment into a company to give them funds to complete a project which hopefully somehow will generate value in the brand and hopefully that value will translate into higher coin prices). This is unfortunately a very difficult economic proposition for many reasons:
1) The project is itself is an effective solution to an important problem and has an effective team that can not only implement the technology but also drive adoption. This criteria eliminates more than half of the current ICOs, because many are applications of blockchain that are unnecessary and can be accomplished more efficiently using traditional technology
2) The project has a clear revenue model that will actually generate future income for the company issuing the ICO. This is critical because without income, there is no long term value to a token. The concept of utility tokens increasing in value because of their use is a fallacy. Because tokens are always comparable to similar services in $USD (for example file storage), a utility token which increases in price too fast will become underutilized as users flock to other solutions. Another fallacy is the theory of brand name or popularity, which suggests that just because a project achieves milestones and becomes well know means that the value of its token will increase. This is simply an extension of the greater fool theory which does not exist without speculators, who do not appear to be returning en masse to the market anytime soon. Therefore, by eliminating all the erroneous drivers of token value, we are left only with revenue. Once we eliminate projects that do not have a revenue path, we are down to about 10% of the current ICOs.
3) Even after the above criteria are met, we still have to wonder how revenue translates into higher valuation of a token. After all, tokens do not confer any equity in the actual company. Especially concerning is ICO issuers who have taken on VC funding for actual equity in their companies, while still doing an ICO which effectively represents no rights or benefits to token holders. For all the SEC talk of a token being a security, it confers absolutely none of the benefits of being one. Typically, investors realize profits when a company is acquired, yet in the case of tokens, an acquirer would simply buy out the actual equity and leave the token holders with nothing. There are only a handful of projects that actually promise to provide economic benefits to token holders