Future ICOs will likely become reputation-gated from a practical standpoint.

It's counterintuitive to accept all participants without any screening mechanism. Put yourself in a project team's position—there are clear pain points:

• Bot participation skewing allocation metrics
• Wallet patterns showing dump-on-listing intent
• Participants with zero product utility expectations

Reputation-based filtering emerges as the most efficient solution here. It naturally filters out bad-faith actors while ensuring genuine community members get access. This isn't about exclusivity for its own sake—it's about aligning incentives between projects and their actual user base.

The projects that adopt early reputation systems will likely see healthier token distribution and community dynamics down the line.