I am with you on this, the whole ICO space is a huge crypto headache in my opinion and needs to be kind of regulated down to the legit only. My issue is this, why even ICOs anyways? Just go old fashioned, get the damn project done like most of us have with self investing and fund raising through community involvement and pray your project gives the world a use case everyone can get behind.
For me the ICO craze was at the beginning a weak link and why I have yet to bank on Ethereum or any of its counterparts to this day. JP Morgan was the first standoffish issue I had with Ethereum, in this to get away from those guys yet they get in the chain with their own version of crypto via ETH and to me that was a huge sign that ETH was putting a mass target on this space. Maybe not their doing but something I always felt was going to stir trouble for this ecosystem from day one.
The scammer issues aside, we have a bigger issue in crypto right now. Not enough people are researching like we used to when we had only 30 coins to choose from back in the day. Back then all of us knew well enough to dig in and get to talking with the devs to pick them apart before investing but now its kind of this madhouse of too many options and people feeling rushed to hop on the next hot thing before they miss out. Me, personally to anyone new in this space, look to the old school ways and take time to really know what you're getting yourself into before you put a single dime on anything.
Do I think projects deserve funding, always....the work put into these things can get costly now a days due to so much competition but maybe its time developers return to the old ways of tweaking their systems before going public so there is a valuable product for users to actually have a tangible look inside these things. I suggest community crowdfunds with no hyped promises and more transparent views on what they are doing. The money will come if you work hard at anything.
On the flipside, ICOs did provide some serious mass appeal to Fintechs that are legit, not so sure what route those guys will go at this stage but I hope this move that we need doesn't leave the ones we need in this space behind.
Keep it simple, Bitcoin did not get here via pick pocketing users and so many other coins did amazing with the simple systems to bring value to the table. I think that we got so rushed to advance that we forget what actually works and doesn't in our crypto communities. Time we get back to our roots and guide the newbies that were not here during the early years and show them the light.