we face a lot of issues with people who look at what something "could" be, and not what it is. Promises are the worst part of new projects because many people fall for them. It's true that it's better than nothing, but if a project promises you a lot in return of getting funded, you have to realize and accept the fact that they could take that funding and leave.
There is no incentives for them to use those same funds to make the project better, they may do that, but they may also not do that. Which is why it's quite obvious that we are not going to get that much return from most of the new projects since the devs are only interested in getting rich themselves first, and ignore all the investors who lose money on it.
That became a trend in the crypto world much later on, which made no sense. People pay founders money for creating a token, usually a shitty one, so that they can do a better one. That didn't existed back in the day, you would have coins that didn't existed one day, and existed another day. You wouldn't even buy a coin that was premined, so the creators of projects literally had no power at all.
You would mine it via the wallet on the hour it was created, so when it had the lowest hashrate, to get some. Basically nobody had any unfair advantage ever, and nobody gained anything from the creation of it. Nowadays, creators are just greedy people who want money from you, for creating something that takes ten minutes to create. Never understood how people believed in them and actually funded them.