If there seems far more effort at marketing pre-sales, crowd sales, airdrops and bounties--it could be a scam. Agree with comments to start with the white paper and team, see if they're doing anything unique. There are several ICOs claiming to focus on identity management, for example. But how are they different?

It doesn't take $20million to develop code--most of those efforts are raising money to raise more money--and they waste it on worldwide conferences, nice offices, perks for executives--then they pay some developers to actually make something. This is how 80% (according to the WSJ) did it in 2017 and they're already gone.

I finally found a project building something from the ground up, www.shardus.com