Have to be honest with you, that is how all yhe instances started including lemmy.world.

but now they have enough reputation & users to make them feel like the safest option

There is no metric by which to know this yet as lemmy is new. Its not like there are 5 servers that are 10 years old and al the rest are just starting up. Just how it is.

compared with random instances with 2-3 users or so, a instance who is there since the beginning / relative long compared to other is safer feeling tho.