This is a trend that happens a lot with bounty campaigns this days for blockchain projects, the truth is if a project doesn't meet its hardcap it is almost impossible to pay out the entirety of the bounty budget.
I think a change of approach should be adopted, projects should have a bounty budget that they will be capable of paying as long as the soft cap is reached.
This may mean a smaller budget but it also ensures hunters don't just join out of greed and spam repeatedly.
At the end everyone is happy
All projects I joined have a condition that if soft cap not reached then bounties will not be paid. Once soft cap reached then bounties will be paid. Also many have condition that only percentage of total token sold will be used for bounties and airdrops like for example even if Project X have 1billion token supply if they only sold 350million token and reached softcap then 10% of the 350million will be distribute for bounties not 10% of 1billion token supply.
I haven't encountered any project yet that have condition that they have to reach hardcap to distribute the bounties and airdrops.