[nullc]

The ICO ecosystem was expressly designed to help liquidate illiquid positions created by the super-massive eth premine without collapsing the market.

I suppose you're right that there wasn't any requirement for that design for the ICOs to be scams, there just wasn't any particular need for them to not be scams.

Virtually all (actually all?) ICOs themselves have been designed to have scam friendly terms-- e.g. no real ownership or control for the buyers, no accountability for the sellers, and little to no transparency. Even the least scammy of the ICOs have some term or another that effectively enables their issuers to just walk off with the funds with no recourse in the contract.