The truth is, any project that will pay will not stress the users, and from history, non of this projects are like Bitcoin, make your research and come back.
Cryptocurrency projects can have source of tokens by their tokenomics for airdrop distribution to community but they mint tokens from the air and it does not cost them anything to distribute tokens in airdrop to community.
You miss this important point. Like 1M token costs them $500,000 or the like but in reality, the project team don't lose anything. They get more by airdrop distribution like free marketing and attract many investors to their projects. At the end if they do rug pull, investors lose money but project team don't lose money.
It is high time we believed this truth. Some of the projects that listed good price and gave rewards didn't stress much their participants. I actually do not know if they really stressed them, I am just assuming.
They can do pump and dump scheme and if you join nearly at the end of their manipulated pump, you will stuck in unavoidable dump later and lose very big part of your capital.
I remember years ago I was introduced to pi network and I was mining until I became tired of the process and abandoned it. I thought I will be regretting now because they said it is bigger than bitcoin.
Pi Network is a pure scam project, without a blockchain but claims to have it, year by year and now nothing happens with their blockchain main net.