True, it's easier for a project team to kill a project on their own if they have enough funds and it meets their goal. If people lost interest in project then they could abandon it without anyone's care since the price also low. Sometimes, bounty or airdrop is just a ploy in their scheme.
I think what happened all this time was just like you said. The bounty and airdrop hunter are only scapegoats as a reason for the team to flee with all the investors' money.
bounty hunter and airdrop hunter have always been blamed, and become a threat, but it is only for bad projects, for good projects bounty hunter and airdrop hunter are part of the project, look at good projects like Cartesi, even though they have a bounty and airdrop program CTSI prices in Binance are very good and always going up