I've noticed on a slack I go to often that people are very clueless when it comes to participating ICOs. Generally participation is done the same way for all ICOs, except for EOS and others. So I'm going to give a very simple guide on how to participate in an ICO. You can try this guide on an ICO I think is very good: MyBit, If you don't like the ICO you can just use a very small amount to participate and get a good experience on how to participate in an ICO.
1. Go to the website
Enter the website, and before anything else check if the url is right, many times people create similar websites with similar urls to trick people and steal their BTC or ETH.
2. Look for the fundraiser address
Some sites require you to make an account, after you do, look for the fundraiser address and make sure the address is a contract, if the address is not a contract then you're either in a fake site or the official site was hacked and the contract address was replaced by the hackers address. To make sure the address is a contract go to etherscan.io/address/"ENTER ADDRESS HERE" and see if you find "Home / Contract Accounts / Address" then it's ok, if you instead find "Home / Normal Accounts / Address" then RUN it's a fake address.
3. Send ETH to the address
Now that you've confirmed that you're not being tricked, send ETH to the address and, if you weren't scammed, you will receive the tokens on the ETH address you used to send the ETH.
How can I see the tokens on my wallet?
Now, how do you see the tokens on the address you used to send ETH.
- On the myetherwallet wallet
If you're using myetherwallet.com, find and click on "Add Custom Token"
and fill the fields like this:
Address: 0x94298F1e0Ab2DFaD6eEFfB1426846a3c29D98090
Token Symbol: MyB
Decimals: 8
This example if for the MyBit ICO, this information is usually on the site somewhere, if you can't find it just talk to the devs on the slack and they'll give you the info.
- On the Mist wallet
On mist go to contracts scroll down and click on "watch token", then populate the first field with the address given to you. For MyBit the address is 0x94298F1e0Ab2DFaD6eEFfB1426846a3c29D98090. Again this address can be found on the site somewhere, if you can't find it ask on the coins slack.
There are other wallets that you can use to see the tokens, Parity I think is one of them, It's just a matter of searching the wallet on google to see if it supports ERC-20 tokens.
That will be all, peace out.