I think to some extent it's completely different than crypto. Many seem to be not meant to really be a part of the crypto space ie currency, stored value, smart contracts, etc.
I honestly don't know that much about them but it seems like it's a way for startups to get around SEC rules regarding accreddited investors so the success really has nothing to do with the crypto space being successful, it's about whether some private company is going to take off with their new technology
Yeah very true. As I said, a lot of these ICOs aren't really meant to exist. I believe a lot of start ups just use them to raise money - which is completely fine. Unfortunately it just looks bad to people that aren't really familiar with the crypto space, hence hinderingt the mainstream awareness and adoption of cryptos in the short term.