At this time, a very few projects have bright future. Most of these are not potential. Scam and fake projects are available now. For investment, we should need deep analysis about the project. It is better to enter a project after a well progress.
Your last statement may have different opinions as there are different types of investors, some loves taking the risk while the project still on it's introductory stage while some are just like you who participate or invest when they already seen actual progress and real usages, but for sure DYOR is the important package before doing any investment.
Some crypto project are just clone chain/copy from another existing project. But the good thing about is they evolve and improve the existing one. But some project are created due to hype. Some businessman who doesn't really care about the tech would jump in and offer an idea without the intent of executing it, they just want the money.
When money strikes and start to talk, people will be greed and start working with it. The reason why we needed to be extra careful
in doing any participation with new projects, most of them are just after investors money no real plans to make the project worthy
and usable.