I think icodrops is a well-known site for ICO already even before and this forum is likely aware of it. Well, these days I think alpha thing is getting shared across twitter community already, it's not just about the upcoming launchpads but there are lot of other stuff too like airdrops and other free stuff, even the ordinal craze some of those happens to be free.
I think most projects today do rely on VCs and we may see other still doing the public ICO but for me it already slowed down in terms of adoption.
I guess, a great part of this, is due to the Actual sentiment of the Market. The Ico was a banger in Bull seasons, but now I am finding again some strong ones(that also have airdrops incoming) Zksync and layer zero I discovered first there and later the proper Airdrops (well possible airdrops because SUI is a case that didn't have one)
Everyone is aware that ICOs are no longer a thing today. But if there are still prospect ICOs that you think are good enough, I just hope that they're for the actual project and not just about the short term profitability of it.
The matter from these ICO projects, if there have been a hype that's being made. Then, you can expect that it's life isn't going to be longer as expected.
Other than that, people do try to avoid most of these ICOs anyway today because of how they performed badly on 2018 bear market and not just that. Many of them turned into a scam.
For that reason (scam ones) we must DYOR, the problem here as well is to follow the instructions of Content creators blindly. Personally, I go into ICOS that are with high expectations (there is tags on that platform) and are in pretty solid hosters like Coinlist.
In 2019-2020(after the crash of the COVID) I saw plenty of projects that anyone that had the lucky to enter got huge rises. I know that now is not a thing (bear market stills here) and the Airdrops are more popular (even in that you have to invest something or even more).
And I know that the most experienced ones and older users here should know (for not say must) this kind of platform but also I am seeing more newcomers and "The public is renewed"
Thanks for comment!