Token distribution via ICO is at best full of scams at and worst totally illegal. Furthermore, new token projects are all centralized because a single entity must handle and control all of the initial coins and all of the the raised ICO money. By distributing tokens via an Initial Mining Offering (known as an IMO), the ownership of the token contract no longer belongs with the deployer at all and the deployer is ‘just another user.’

Since Ether is not being sent to the project, investor risk exposure is significantly diminished. Also, projects incorporating ERC20/ERC721 tokens can now be completely decentralized like the Bitcoin community and Ethereum development community. This means the development team can be composed of volunteers around the world in a flat structure, similar to a free open source project.

Instead of assigning all tokens to a single owner as occurs with an ICO, tokens are initially owned by the contract in an IMO. A method named mint() acts as a faucet and assigns tokens to anyone who calls the method. This mint() function typically requires a Proof of Work algorithm in order to minimize gas fees. This way, everyone can see that the distribution is fair and that no advantage or control has been given to a central leader.

One community concern for mined tokens has been a concern of energy use without a function for securing a network. Although token mining does not secure a network, it does secure a community from corruption since it eliminates monarchs and eliminates ICOs. Furthermore, an IMO (initial mining offering) may last as little as a week, a day, or an hour at which point all of the tokens have been minted.

Standardized CPU and GPU token mining software exists today and tokens are being mined at over 200GH/s already.

Read more about this specification and support the movement away from ICOs here: https://github.com/0xbitcoin/EIP918-Mineable-Token/blob/master/README.md

Please also see why an IMO helps prevent Sybil Attacks: