Currently, there are more than 700 crypto coins and tokens listed at coinmarketcap.com. There are also many others unlisted. I think we can agree on the fact that most of them will not become succesful, some of them are dead already. What are they missing? What a dream crypto service should have? I'll try to put some criteria into a list:

• team of dedicated developers
• proper distribution
• community
• marketing
• low inflation model
• decentralized mining or stakes
• user friendlines
• platform support
• strong security model
• associated services
• hide crypto
• hardware wallet support
• rewards
• (optional) killer app

Team of dedicated developers

A successful development team should not be based on one developer but there should be at least 2 or 3 core developers plus several additional extra devs. Otherwise, there is a large risk that project will stay abandoned.

Proper distribution

A community often complains that distribution is unfair. This is a case for a pre-mine or limited ICO. It's always better when everyone can get a chance to join the party with others from the beginning.

Community

This is hard to organize, however if an idea behind the project is tempting, proper people will gather around. However, good communication, the announcements and project management can help here a lot.

Hardware wallet support

When something has value there are always people who wish to steal it. In crypto-word user devices (computers and phones) cannot be considered secure. When there is hardware wallet support for the crypto token, security can be lifted up to a reasonable level.

Marketing

Proper marketing can boost a success of a project a lot. Super marketing with a big advertisement is not necessary but at least there should be regular development updates and community support for users.

Low inflation model

Scarecity is good for rare thigs to increase their value. So token which has more inflation than a potential evaluation is not a good investment. Good inflation ratio is a key. Or some good hybrid approach like Steem vs Steem Power can avoid inflation risks as well.

Simplicity

If service is easy to use it can bring a critical mass of investors and users much more easily. Good UI is a key here but also support for simple scripting is also often desirable.

Platform support

People will not change their devices for your service, you must bring your service to their devices and so support for various platforms and devices is necessary.

Strong security model

This is not that much about internal security model but mainly about external usability model. A good internal security model is somehow expected by default. Service must by protected enough to avoid scenarios when users can loose easily their tokens by mistake. In a crypto, it's harder to achieve but it can be also helped by a proper user interface, proper warnings, validations, etc.

Associated services

This is where the Steem really shines. Although lots of crypto currencies focus mainly to token transfers, etc., it's much better when some associated service is a primary goal and a token is secondary.

Hide crypto and focus on goal

Properly design crypto service should be such where no one even knows much that there is some cryptographic architecture behind. For using something people wish to have good user experience model, they don't care about internals. People are not interested in filling buffers with crypto-hashes. They mostly to perform some task as simple and quick as possible, they don't wish to elaborate about internal. If they wish to they can always open the box.

Rewards

Again, the Steem shines here. But it doesn't have to be necessary such a reward. The reward is also a service provided. The reward can be additional value. The reward can be a task simplified which would take much more effort otherwise.

Killer app

Well, this si not a criteria, this is rather a big bonus. This is something special and the most projects will not fulfill this one. Thing is that when a project is a killer-app then it's not that important how good is in the other criteria because this will boost its success hundred times or maybe even thousand times.

What other criteria do you think are also important?