Vaporware

Vaporware is defined as either software or hardware that has been advertised but is not yet available to buy.

Rather, the product is still only a concept or because it has yet to be fully written or designed.

Back in 2017-8, this designation is a blanket term that encompassed the vast majority of initial coin offerings (ICOs), many of which were in the developmental stage.

ICOs were once the uniform standard of investment for such projects, offering little more than methodologies via whitepapers or product roadmaps.

This style of investing clashed with traditional alternatives, often devoid of major details and outlooks.

Concept designs are nothing new to any industry, though do represent several questions for such projects.

This in turn led to the labeling of ICOs are highly speculative, which ultimately helped erode its popularity through such stigmas.

ICOs Defined by Vaporware

In the most extreme cases, vaporware is used to describe cryptocurrencies that were advertised but never made it to the development stage at all.

If fundraising occurred for these coins before they disappeared, an exit scam may have occurred.

The cryptosphere is littered with such instances and episodes of abuse, which caused many regulators to crack down on ICOs.

Still, many such projects have actually suffered from this designation, and gone on to prosper.

Tron, Verge, Cardano, and even Ripple were all at one time mired in uncertainty.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of such projects deserve this moniker, as vaporware is a pejorative term, which many projects are not keen to garner.