Consumer crowdfunding websites like kickstarter and indiegogo have largely failed to live up to their early hype. Campaigns now fall into two categories: designer vaporware from people you've never heard of, and established companies that don't need crowdfunding but are using it anyway for marketing purposes.

On the other hand... niche crowdfunding websites like Crowd Supply seem to be doing better than ever. There are a few reasons for this:

1. A lot of campaigns are for open source hardware. These projects are developed in the open, and you can go to github and download schematics and look through prototype firmware to evaluate the project yourself, months before the campaign even starts.

2. Vetting seems to be better. There are almost always real prototypes floating around by the time a campaign goes live.

3. More modest goals. More often than not, the funding goals are right around some sensible volume buying / manufacturing threshold. The creators usually just want to be able to get a PCB with microvias, or buy parts by the reel rather than in single-unit quantities. You don't see as many creators trying to get rich quick or bootstrap a company.

In my view, this is more in line with what crowdfunding was supposed to be: Getting volume buying commitments for an already working design rather than speculative "investing." A lot of kickstarter/indiegogo "creators" should probably be in jail for fraud.