As a RiF user for many years, I was completely insulated from the award bloat. Every time I see a screenshot of the official app, it seems so ridiculous.
Some of them were given for free if you used the official app. I briefly used the official app before I found out about Apollo, and it gave me a Wholesome award to give.
You could give awards with Apollo. I came to Apollo from Sync on Android, which could not be used to give awards. It was something I really appreciated, because I felt coins/awards from third party apps might help Reddit continue to let 3rd party apps live.