Earlier about 60 connects were free on Upwork, and all the project required 1 connect to apply.

Upwork as become greedy now and making freelancers pay for connect as well as asking 6 connects for bidding.

This is very costly, and above that the number of hoax projects have increased.

Upwork cannot charge for a subpar platform. There might still be people finding assignments from it, I have not been successful for sometime now.