Topic: Forum advertising DeFi totally-not-scams - page 2. (Read 677 times)

You've been very generous handing out coin before - why not hire a professional to evaluate the ads?

It is an old project in 2017, a PoS/ Masternode coin, PHORE https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/phr-phore-100-pos-30-masternodes-zerocoin-governance-no-icopremine-2307909
Then switched to a new ANN thread https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/phr-phore-blockchain-private-decentralized-marketplace-ecosystem-posmn-3179265
Announcement on Graphene https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.55388708

Yeah, you're most likely right.  There's suddenly a new tech (DeFi) and all of the computer-literate hucksters, scammers, retards, and others come out of the woodwork in order to cash in on it without actually advancing the underlying technology if they even use it to begin with.  And yep, that's just what happened with the ICO craze, although DeFi seems like it might be useful to some folks whereas 99.9999% of ICO projects were obvious nonsense upon reading the first paragraph of the ANN thread.

I don't understand what Graphene or Phore are, but hopefully people can judge for themselves whether they want to get involved in it.  Theymos shouldn't be shouldering any responsibility for what Phore might do IMO.  He doesn't see it as an obvious scam, and he's just allowing them to purchase some advertising space on the forum.  Big effin' deal. 

We'll wait until there's a rock-solid scam accusation against them until we nail Theymos up on a telephone pole.  Sound good?

Advertising Phore itself definitely wouldn't be allowed. That's why I initially rejected their bids in the auction. Phore is definitely an "ICO-type-thing", which is explicitly banned from advertising: buying these sorts of tokens is something like buying shares in penny stocks, but even far more risky. However, I interpret this ad as advertising a product of Phore, namely the Graphene ecosystem and apps built on top of it such as their Marketplace. By analogy, I see this like Nikola advertising their fuel cell technology and their maybe-soon-to-be-available vehicles, not Nikola advertising NKLA shares.

To be clear, I'm not claiming that Phore will run away with someone's money - they may or may not - but they're clearly attempting to cash in on the DeFi craze, which is 99% scams akin to the 2017 ICO nonsense (IMO). To me the intent looks clearly "buy Phore because DeFi".

Also it doesn't seem to be related to this: http://cryptoeconomics.cs.umass.edu/graphene/graphene-short.pdf so the name choice is unfortunate at best.

In evaluating these sorts of things, I try to determine whether the ad is intended to attract investment; if it is, then it's not allowed. Just because it's possible to invest in the advertised thing doesn't mean that it must be rejected: I'm looking at the intent of the ad. I was convinced in this case that the ad is aimed at attracting interest in the technology, not attracting investment. Neither the ad nor the linked article encourages people to buy Graphene tokens. You'd actually have to do a bit of work to figure out how to buy the tokens: you'd have to research further to figure out how that Graphene tokens will be airdropped to holders of Phore, and then you'd have to buy Phore. Phore also apparently has a working marketplace app, which makes me think that the whole thing isn't complete vaporware. So my overall sense here is that Phore is actually trying to build a product, and they're trying with this ad to generate interest in the product, not to generate interest in investing in Phore/Graphene. This is allowed. (Advertised things do not have to be good/useful to be accepted, BTW. Ads are not endorsements/recommendations. I'm just trying to prevent forum users from getting scammed due to ads.)

Now, I could be missing some context here. I don't follow this space very much at all, I never heard of Phore or Graphene before this, and there's a limit to how much time I can spend time researching this stuff.

I have on many occasions rejected ads for being for investments, often very significantly reducing ad revenue for that ad round. I would've done it here without hesitation if necessary.

This helps? : https://phore.io/

There is no site for graphene, at least from what i checked, all I found was this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PhoreProject/comments/jaupe3/graphene_next_generation_blockchain_platform/

https://medium.com/@phoreblockchain/synapse-update-introducing-graphene-1d5a1cb21f8

I need a link.

Sometimes theymos miss points when he investigate but later when he is asked to review he does. I think not long ago there was a case and he removed the advertising.

Do they even have a site? I mean the ad itself links to a Medium article. There is a website for the Phore shitcoin, bagholders of which are going to get this Graphene airdrop... I think.

The site is pretty empty, they don't look to have Sourcecode and their legal link took me to medium...

Just posting this here for posterity so that when it bitconnects the shit out of gullible idiots I can say "told you so":



I would have thought it falls under


but what do I know, perhaps it's


because