Have vision and be laser clear on those coins and tokens you HODL or plan to HODL because for every champion project there are a multitude of jokers. Nobody want's to be the joke.

Reading and critiquing the quality of a whitepaper is essential as well as taking a macro view of the environment and making an informed assessment on a project's chances to fulfill a current market need and in other instances, create an entirely new niche(the latter being the sweet spot). The process can be tricky to navigate so the Token Economy Canvas created by Philip Stehlik and shared kindly for eveyone's use is a tool which assists greatly.

The Token Economy Canvas

The Token Economy Canvas, based on the Lean Canvas Model, queries nine variables in each block. With the structure you can perform the due diligence required to sort the genuine contenders from the pretenders, even if you're thin on time. The onus is on the individual. Pointing the finger at despots and scammers when projects self destruct is useless. Trade responsibly and own your decisions. Use the tools at your disposal.

Before and After

Although the Token Economy Canvas' primary utility is to guide people before they make a decision to put their hard earned money into a project or not, it should be noted that this exercise can still be well worth while to run projects already invested in through the canvas. This can be done on an ongoing basis if you'd like to maintain a high level of attention(particularly as the blockchain space moves so fast) but at least once especially if you haven't assessed those projects in your portfolio in this way before.

To read a more detailed explanation of the Token Economy Canvas see Philip Stehlik's Medium article: Evaluating Blockchain Projects With Token Economy Canvas