I generally disagree that willing participants who gave their money without expectation of future return are getting fleeced in this particular project. You do

I generally disagree that willing participants who gave their money without expectation of future return are getting fleeced in this particular project. You don't need to look far to find rugpulls https://twitter.com/RugDocIO https://twitter.com/RugDocIO regularaly tweets out ongoing rugpulls. Interestingly though after a technical change in where gas/txn fees go (EIP-1559) any payment of fees actually does go to all holders of ETH proportionally due to fees fueling deflation. Of course even still this is not like a traditional pyramid scheme, but more similar to stock buy backs being fueled by each individual sale that a company makes.