I am pretty sure that it was similar in 2016/2017, in the golden age of bounty hunting. Most of those projects are long gone, but the market back then was so irrational that even scams and shitty projects listed on exchanges at multiple x-es, so this created an illusion of "better times". But then again, it is probably true that less blatant scams existed back then and folks actually tried to accomplish something with their projects, now they just pull the rug without even trying.
Now I feel the same is happening with DeFi projects because right now they are new in market and there are some really good projects that are coming out and some strong decentralized exchanges like UniSwap but then there are scammers already entering this DeFi market and I have seen some tokens being made and run away already so it feels like what the ICO market was a few years ago is now in the DeFi where some projects are really good but there are scam traps being set too.
I always try and avoid bounty campaigns who are giving away too many tokens in bounty because such tokens will hardly ever make it to the exchange listing and if even they do somehow then the will struggle to maintain price because there will large number of dumps happening as soon as it gets listed and bounty people are so insecure they will never hold coins for long.