Basically approach everything like it's a scam, and only start to trust them if they prove to be otherwise, there is nothing wrong with that. I mean if you start thinking "this is a scam project" at the very start, that means they will work hard to prove to you they are not, and they will not do it personally to you like you are the only investor, so you just check what they do and what they provide, and that will be fine.
Look at pinksale, between audit, kyc, safu and many other stuff, they end up getting the projects to be a lot bigger and so forth. This means that if they keep working towards that, you get to see what they are working on, and then you can decide if they are actually good or not, and that will help you out a lot.
When developers create a scam and know that they create a scam they make too attractive project. They must attract a big community of investors to collect a lot of money from them. People always want to earn more and that is why scams always attract people by big profit and promises them to earn more and more money.
this should be basic rule of thumbs of determining scam projects basically too much of an unrealistic promises and big profits in short term just outright means that its a red flag and everyone should avoid such projects in general.
after all the big project that I knew never ever giving such promises yet they become big project anyway. meaning commitment and efforts worth more than just some bullshit.
but nowadays there are many scammers that already knew that, despite not promising anything they still outright scams. like shitcoin project in general that are just outright trying to make pump and dump scheme which usually ended up with the devs dumping their coin to the market until the value become zero.