More than a couple of days back, I was going through some article and I actually stumbled at this news of Phoenix.wiki.
Apparently, the news is that Phoenix.wiki is a group of investors who crowd source their funds on ETH from people and pay them back based on an arithmetic calculation.
Lets say you pay 1 ETH to Phoenix.wiki what happens next.
You will wait for that specific round to get over (it is already the 3rd round and looks like people that got their Round 1 & 2 that got complete, have received their payment too)
After the round gets over ( for each round, they have target collection to achieve and once it is achieved the round is deemed to be complete), you will get your first payout P*2 , where P - Initial Payment.
For the subsequent rounds you will keep getting paid as soon as the rounds get over, on the basis of a formula which goes like, P* 2^(n-2) where n is the number of round that got completed recently or the iteration that got over.
If the round doesn't get complete, the ETH that you had deposited will be given back. However, a round is deemed incomplete if the target is not achieved in 365 days.
The current status is
They also have a calculator in which you can punch in the desired value of ETH and see what potential payouts you could get.
It doesn't look like a Ponzi, straight off the cuff, for the fact that you can verify the transactions both in and out and also the smart contract which is used for payouts and to determine the completion of the rounds is available for everyone to see in etherscan
https://etherscan.io/address/0xA33c4A314fAA9684eefFA6ba334688001Ea99bBC
Now, neither am I a part of the phoenix.wiki team, nor am I endorsing it. I am just curious about the fact that even in Crypto world, there seems to be an MLM (Multi-Level-Marketing) styled DAPP that has come up.
All I can notice now is that, there have been a few whales that have pumped in share and for all I know, would have received their due payments as well but now, people seem to be pushing in fractions to how this is going to work.
If it's going to be fractions that come in, it will take a long time to get filled up and that would give the phoenix.wiki folks a lot of time, by then they would get their ROI easily, whether the round gets completed or not.
And if it doesn't, all they need to give back is the principal and no interest for like a year.
Invest wisely and responsibly !!!