Vaporware is a product that is publicly announced, often with great fanfare, but never reaches customers, or arrives years late and with far less than was promised. The word grew up in the computer industry in the 1980s, where firms were accused of pre-announcing software to freeze out rivals. In crypto it describes projects that raise money on a bold whitepaper and roadmap but never ship a working network or product. Many tokens sold in the 2017 and 2018 initial coin offering boom fitted the label. Vaporware is not always fraud, since honest teams can fail, but it overlaps with schemes such as the exit scam and rug pull. Warning signs include missed deadlines, no public code and a vague use case.