Before You Ape Into Any ICO, Read This First

ICO is back.

Scroll Twitter for five minutes and you’ll feel it immediately:
every timeline is convinced they’ve found the next MegaETH.
Or the next Plasma.
Or something even bigger — supposedly.

I’ve been in crypto long enough to recognize this phase.

Excitement is high.
Confidence is loud.
And critical thinking quietly disappears.

So before you blindly jump into any ICO, I want to slow things down and talk about the one factor almost everyone ignores:

Market environment matters more than people admit.

Let me explain — from a builder’s perspective.

They fail predictably.

For every successful ICO story people love to reference, there are ten near-identical attempts that quietly died.

One project pioneers a model, executes it perfectly, and captures the moment.
Ten other teams copy the surface-level mechanics, assume success is repeatable, and learn the hard way that timing + execution + context are not optional.

Right now, many teams want to run an ICO simply because:

That’s not a strategy.
That’s trend-chasing.

The projects that truly succeed usually planned their ICO long before the market noticed them.

I don’t care about your deck.
I don’t care about your influencer quotes.
I don’t care how many buzzwords fit into one tweet.

I care about one thing:

Does the product solve a real problem — today?

Not in a hypothetical future.
Not “once infra matures.”
Not “after mass adoption.”

Now.

Good ICOs usually have:

Bad ICOs live entirely inside narratives.

If a team can’t explain what their product does in one clear sentence, that’s your first red flag.

Tokens don’t create value.
Products do.

Ideas are cheap.
Execution is rare.

Look at the team’s history:

Experience compounds in crypto — especially during chaos.

Anonymous teams aren’t automatically bad.
But anonymity raises the bar.

Strong teams adapt when narratives shift.
Weak teams disappear the moment attention moves elsewhere.

And crypto is an attention economy.

This part is uncomfortable — but important.

Ask:

If insiders entered at ultra-low valuations and you’re buying the “public opportunity” at a massive markup, understand the game you’re playing.

A good ICO makes sense even without hype.
A bad ICO requires hype to survive.

Dashboards lie.
Testnets lie.
Inflated activity lies.

What doesn’t lie?

Ask yourself:

If demand exists only because of a future airdrop — that demand isn’t real.

It’s borrowed.

Builders love to pretend marketing doesn’t matter.

They’re wrong.

MegaETH didn’t just build — they controlled the narrative.
They understood that in Web3, attention is liquidity.

If nobody is talking about a project before the ICO, don’t expect magic after.

Great projects tell clear stories early.
Bad ones hide behind word salad:

Sure you are.

Read the fine print. Always.

You need to understand:

If you don’t understand the token economics, don’t invest.
Use AI tools. Ask questions. Take your time.

If the structure favors insiders while pushing all risk onto retail — walk away.

Fair distribution doesn’t mean cheap.
It means aligned.

This is the part most people ignore.

In a true bull market, a good project can reach a $500M–$1B FDV on narrative alone.

In today’s market, even strong projects often sit at $100M–$300M.

Same project.
Different environment.
Completely different risk-reward.

Timing isn’t everything —
but it’s never irrelevant.

ICO is not free money.
It never was.

Yes, this cycle will create winners.
It will also create a long list of painful lessons.

Don’t buy because others are buying.
Don’t outsource your thinking to KOLs.
Don’t assume every hyped project is the next breakout.

The worst projects exploit FOMO.
The best ones quietly build value — then let the market catch up.

As a builder, I’m not betting on noise.
I’m betting on products, teams, and timing.

Do the same.

— TonyX
Founder & Builder