You must learn from others' mistakes. If you go through this forum then you could find lots of similar experiences shared by other forum people by the times of 2018/2019. I mean you could not identify any scam projects from the initial stage itself but the only solution could be just staying away from all ICOs. Because, if you keep investing in some 5 to 10 project then only one might get you good returns and all others will end up scamming you at any stage. I have seen many projects go up to the stage of listing in exchanges but you will not able to get back your invested money as heavy dump will happen before they open deposit option for their token.

So, identifying at initial stage or at any stage may not help you but just staying away alone will secure your hard earned money. Invest only with bitcoin and enjoy 99.9% assured returns in long term holding.