That’s where our perceptions differ. There’d be zero need to continue development, if scamming was the goal.
The revenue could be had without additonal effort.

How is done correctly?
How would it have been done correctly a decade ago in your opinion?
All distribution schemes I know or can think of (shy of using people’s biometric data to stop them from getting more than their fair share) is at risk of being expoited by in-groups - see the fortune of Satoshi.