Yes Ethereum pretty much killed off all those POW coins. Before ETH there was POS like with Blackcoin but nobody really assumed it would take off. Then when ETH became big, the next best thing were their POS launch and their ERC20 tokens.
So almost every project went live with their ERC20 tokens. I think its mostly due to how the ETH devs are claiming that POW is a huge waste of energy and bad for the environment. So whenever any POW coin was launched it was assumed its purpose was to "pollute the earth and enable global warming". So slowly and slowly most coins started to become token and now the ANN is filled with them. Many being nothing but scams.
POW is a waste of energy, time and money, when a project is scam and/or no direction.
so if a scammer wants to scam just be an eco friendly scam do an ERC20 scam or any non-mineable tokens LOL