What you described is literally a ponzi scheme where latter investors are paid by earlier investors. If true, I would not touch that with a 1 metre stick.
Anyhow, I think that there are legitimate dividend tokens out there, but they are all primarily casinos (e.g. Betfury's token).
They distribute tokens based on actual profit, not because other people are buying into the token.
Depends on what we are talking about. Here we are talking about staking and all, or liquidity providing if you want, and those are not like ponzi. Because in one of them, people trade their coins, and pay a fee, and people who invest to LP end up getting that fee paid, and the other is staking, where you invest the token, and that token is printed, just like how bitcoin and eth is mined, and that printed ones go to people who stake it.
As you can see, ponzi is nowhere to be found because nobody pays you with others money and try to keep it alive, it is a system that is dynamic and not fixed as well which means whatever action is taken, that much reward is given.