It appears steem has a good system for the distribution of coins, users get paid for blogging and this creates a network effecg, unfortunatily the coin itself is not very impressive.
In order for a coin to be successfull the tech behind it needs to be good and you also need a big enough number of users to be a networ effect.
Referral program has of course worked in the past, it nay mot be a good method to distribute coins but it can be a very effective way to advertise a product, people making money convincing friends to join. A guy contacted me once to sell me some overpriced fruit juice, he did a poor job but that didn't matter, i would not have joined that scam anyway.
This is a real decentralized ponzi:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1415365.0 It's not mulit-level. You only get fees from person you refer. You don't get anything from the people that your referrers refer.
From the
websiteWhen an Basic Account pays $100 to become a Lifetime Member, $50 is paid to their Referrer, $30 is paid to the nearest Lifetime Member, and $20 is paid to the Network. After this point the Lifetime Member becomes its own referrer and nearest Lifetime Member and its prior Referrers no longer get any revenue from this user.