No such thing as a decentralized pyramid, friend. Decentralization is built on flat architecture.
Wrong. Decentralized only means there isn't a central authority. You could have a flat structure at the top with many participants but then each participant has a pyramid below him. Don't know if I explained that well.
A federated system is not flat, but is decentralized. Any PoS or dPoS crypto with governance is not flat, but is decentralized. For ex the voting system on hive. Your vote counts more than mine, doesn't mean there is a centralized entity deciding you matter more than me. Just means you got a larger stake in the decentralized protocol.
Completely flat structures are the most decentralized. But it doesn't mean that other structures are centralized.
fees you're mentioning are 0.17%.
0.17% on trading volume though. BTW, the volume on every pool should be counted, not just CUB . Yesterday we saw that CUB did 600k in volume. With other pools it should be more than a million USD. Now, imagine that a farm manages to get a volume equal to the market cap of the farm token everyday. In CUB's case, that's 3 million USD or so a day. Using only a 0.17% fee and compounding this means that 85% of the farm token's marketcap will be generated from fees alone in a year. That's not insignificant at all.
Let's be conservative and assume that all of CUB pools together do only a million USD in volume everyday. That will allow earnings 23% of CUB's marketcap in a year. Which ponzi generates a return on equity of 23%? None, they all generate exactly 0%.
This revenue from fees attract liquidity providers which ends up burning CUB through the 4% fee. So a yield farm token captures significant value from trading fees.
There are dozens of these Defi Protocols that are legit scams.
I agree, but only because they will remove liquidity they initially promised they would provide, or because they promise to deliver on some developments which they never intended to really work on. That's a scam, yes, but still not a ponzi. Because even though they scammed people into a project they don't work on, the project still generates money from fees. It's still a scam though because the performance will be underwhelming compared to investor expectations, based on lies by the developers.
The only way for CUB to not be a scam is if it receives constant development and becomes more sustainable.
I agree. Because Leo promised to deliver on that, and we all expect them to. If they do nothing, they would be a scam, but not a ponzi. Since we already are earning from trading fees.
I think in the end it comes down to a debate about definition. A scam is not necessarily a ponzi. A ponzi is a particular kind of scam that promises returns on money, but never even tries to generate returns and instead pays old debt with new debt.