I would not go so far as to say Dash governance model to some degree has scam attributes, due to masternode operators playing a role in the key decision making process.
I misunderstood you there, i think you were just stating what was used against Dash in the past, my mistake.

In some crypto projects the power lays with miners (Bitcoin Cash for example, just look at the latest hard fork where miners have a lot of power and directly influence the direction of that project).
With Dash the power indeed lays more in the hands of masternode operators, who vote on budget proposals and vote on decision proposals that can directly influence the direction of the Dash project.

In other crypto projects like Proof of Stake projects, the power is in the hands of those holding the coins (the more coins they hold, the more power they have), with DeFi projects the power seems to be concentrated at developer level, giving developers often centralized power over DeFi smart contracts, through their God-mode Admin keys. And i am sure there are also crypto projects where the power is concentrated in yet another way.

There are so many different proof of ..... type of projects these days. So many different ways power is concentrated in a project.