Being listed on an exchange means nothing if the project is shit. The coin needs to be practical, have a good purpose, the project needs to be sustainable for the future, and there needs to be a user base for it. Many ICOs lack one or more, and that's why you see lots of coins/tokens get dumped once it hits an exchange.
It's more than that. Many crap coins are being listed in an exchange everyday.
So being listed is not by any means a measure of success of a project.
You are right that a coin should have a purpose and should gain consumers that will really utilize the coin.
Without application in the market, the coin is basically dead or will end up in trading only, up until the value declines and be abandoned by traders.
You can really tell that a certain project is bound to success if they have good progress, that they can deliver results based from their roadmap, that they have partners to make their project a reality, their dev team is active and has good communication with the community.
Actually there's more, but the bottomline is, they should have a large consumer base or user base. Without consumers, the project will go nowhere.
