I think the steps that must be learned to avoid scam projects.  The first step is to find the website because from the website we can get a lot of information we need such as whitepapers and others. Next we have to make sure that the smart contracts are theirs and not a clone of other altcoins. and look for other information through social media such as telegram, twitter, discord, medium and others to be able to ensure that they really make updates about the projects they are running.