Maybe, which is why I said 'default'. But the lack of good practices or protections means even that the most earnestly run one is extremely risky and likely to ultimately yield fraud like returns to their investors due to honest errors.

Moreover, there is a huge lemon market problem: If if an issuer is in the the (say) 1% of honest efforts they are in constant competition with fraud, under pressure to make misleading fraud-like promises and offer fraud-like returns-- prudent parties realize this and exit knowing that they have better options. So investors are left with the honest participants that were too clueless to realize this or not attractive enough to have other alternatives.

> Are they ever not fraud or a scheme to enrich the architects of the scheme?

The Ethereum ICO is a good, rare example of non-fraudulent ICO.

Sia and Avalanche are some of the least sketchy.

Note that startups also enrich their founders, although usually not in massive upfront cash payments.