Yeah investors are getting smarter day by day. It is obvious that many of these project are just there to scam innocent investors by luring them in investing in fake project. Developers also are just in for the money and not thinking about the effect to investors
I think there is another reason why investors seems to have gotten smarter, investors that are not smart are not going to survive for too long in the market, they are going to lose their money and most likely after that happens they will never invest in the market again.
During that time scammers got a lot of money but now the investors that remain are smarter, they have a lot more knowledge about the markets and about the history of cryptocurrencies and they are not going to be so easily deceived as the average investor of the past.