Many companies are simply marketing their offerings differently, with projects such as BitTorrent and Polkadot calling them "crowdsales."
“The ICO model is not going away,” said Jack Platts, a spokesman at Web3 Foundation that will be running a Polkadot sale later this year. “The ability to raise money from anyone globally in a pseudo-anonymous way is still compelling to a lot of projects, and some version of it will be used long into the future."
That would still suggest investors need to be wary.
"What boggles my mind is that token holder pressure hasn’t prevented entrepreneurs from wanting to avoid this sector," Sokolin said. "Imagine having thousands of upset traders yell at you on social media all day long."
This story was provided by Bloomberg News.