An Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is a crowdsale that allows a blockchain project owner to raise money in a form of digital coins a.k.a. cryptocurrency a.k.a. virtual currency. Most ICO owners raise funds in form of one or more cryptocurrencies such as a bitcoin or Ethereum.
Year 2017 has seen a rise in ICOs but not all ICOs are successful. According to a news published on bitcoin.com, 46% of ICOs failed last year.
The news sources Tokendata says, there are total 902 ICOs launched last year and out of that 142 failed at the funding stage and 276 failed at later stages.
Several companies are raising money just on an idea, so called a whitepaper. Once money is raised, if the team is unable to deliver a promise, or do not have an expertise, or the team to build the promised project is one of the key reasons of failure.