The problem is theft mindset.
Let me assure you, every altcoin projects are meant to be successful because of crowdfunding, ICO, IEO, defi, and all of the fundraising means, what's causes break down of altcoin is development team having a theft and fraudulent mindset, back in the days before 2017, ICO were pretty doing smart and been listed on good exchange but untill scammers start getting into the game it became a center of "go get rich quick". So the solution is to do a diligent research to avoid scam projects.
On the other hand, some prices of altcoin are determined by the exchange to be listed for trading, the development team might suggest but the exchange has final say to avoid dump in price, it doesn't matter if the price start at cent or higher, most defi project strated at $5 and are pretty doing well.
At the end it's always the same story, legitimate developers find a way to create a new concept that could in fact help the market of cryptocurrencies to gain more adoption or to become more powerful but as soon as that happens scammers hijack the concept and begin to create countless coins supposedly with the same concept but that are nothing but scams, then people lose confidence in those kind of projects as they begin to get scammed and then the market goes nowhere, and unfortunately it is a pattern that is almost impossible to break.
