Have you even once considered the gross excess of "shady pump and dumps" is enabled by the toxic, hostile environment for truly original, worthwhile projects that might need some good programmers to get paid?
There is nothing wrong with getting paid and there are many good models for doing that. The unregulated nontransparent ICO model is not one of them.
I agree with cryptohunter on the ICO model being deeply flawed (even if it does "work" in a few exceptional cases -- that does not disprove the general rule) but I don't agree that banner ads can fix it.
Half ICO half POW not so bad.
Yeah its only half bad

To be clear PoW can be bad. The ultra-fast PoW coins where a bunch of insiders and pumpers rent hash and rape it for a day or a week does nothing to remove manipulation. Slow and steady PoW distribution over years is much harder to game, but arguably that too could be gamed by long-term monopolization (if it turns out that Bitcoin's largely-monopolized mining is not a temporary condition).
I can't recall when i have agreed 100% with a comment of yours

Well said !
I couldn't agree more.
I am not against dev's getting paid.
But many simply want a job in crypto to pay their bills.
A lot of them simply are a hired gun..
How many well known dev's in crypto have worked on various projects for the $$$ no matter how bad ?
You old school Altcoin guys know what i am saying.
All i ever hear is how IPO's are 100% legit.. but i think they are not for sooo many reasons.
And when comparing i think they are a step backwards over POW.
We need to get the "Holy Grail" of Initial Distribution.. so far we don't seem to be too worried about it.
It seems like the smart minds in crypto just dropped the search because it was too hard and then settled..
on IPO's / ICO's
understood your concern. So investing in the ICO/IPO is really risky. Especially for the average ppl, they don't have the inside information and any thing about the projects except the campaign materials provided by the so called teams. So if you cannot tolerate the associated risk, you'd better go away with it.