You made a point on developer accountability which converges with my point. If we are going to ask that developers not be anonymous then we have to reduce the risks for developers who decide to be accountable. If we don't then anonymous development will become the norm as a way to reduce the level of risk developers face from ICOs. Pseudo-anonymity can work but is not ideal and so in my opinion we have to figure out ways to reduce risk (increase security) for developers in this space.
ICOs are just a fundraising mechanism. Yes they are more like crowd funding than IPO. But crowd funding itself has legal requirements and is not at all an ideal setup. The SEC allows Crowdfunding but it's very strict on meeting the requirements. For that reason it is a risk or seems like it would be to do an ICO.
Donations have less risk in general. If people lose their money, they donated it to a cause they believed in. If people lose their investment, they are calling their lawyer. In both situations they might call their lawyer but if our goal is to reduce scams and outright fraud then legal means have negative consequences in terms of stacking risks on honest developers who would care enough just to keep their reputations and who don't need it to be enforced in that way.
The whole "anonymous developers" period was a very short and terrible phase.
Very few anonymous developers dominate the scene in 2017.
Again, yes, crowdfunding has legal requirements and ICOs meet those requirements when the people putting on the ICOs simply follow the rules.
There are very simple rules concerning AML/KYC that if you follow them with an ICO, everything is completely legal. Again, this is why we got lawyers and consulted them on the legality of all this.
ICOs only cross the line of becoming "illegal" when the people doing the ICOs make guarantees of profit, equity, or long term dividends.
THAT is illegal.