Topic: Need community input. (Read 539 times)

I like your idea, about starting a service for scam busting and specifically for bounty managers overall.

Yaa, I agree about the "to be faced problems" which many others listed here but if its offered at some cheap rates or better just putting a donation address, we can work through it without censoring any project at all. That would also motivate bounty hunters to do there due intelligence before joining project or promoting it and not just depending on our research fully.


I understand you're decision of not putting your hands in the dirt, of course it would make your hands dirty too.. But not censoring any of this researched projects would just work fine as per I see. Let me know if you are still into it, I would be happy to join you.

I see that you abandoned your idea. But I will leave my opinion.

It may happen that the manager, when he receives such a report, passes it to the developers of the ICO. And they correct their mistakes by masking their scam and begin their work on bitcointalk. Then we will not have the opportunity to reveal new facts of fraud.

If you can do this and do it right then kudos to you. What many people fail to understand is the experience and tools used by most experiencing scam busters aren't available to the average Joe out there. Another possible solution would be to outlined in guidelines and steps on how to identify these scams then let the managers do it themselves through your guidance. Although your experience is sometime that would give you an advantage over others (average bounty manger out there) in regards to identify the scams faster.

The problem with most cooperation between different individuals is the monetary motives of each of these individuals. Just hoping, if this idea finally comes into reality it wont be bought like every ICO/IEO, scam rating platforms out there. Hope you won't let bribes overshadow your judgement of which campaign is a scam or not. If you can put that to check then I'm in support of the idea.

I feel like your wasting a lot of your own free time and other people's free time on doing a job that should already be done by the manager/moderator.

Sure, it sounds like a great idea, and I'm sure a lot of the good people around the forum would help you investigate the new ICO's popping up, but I think the market and community has to come to a state over the past 1-2 year where that service isn't really needed anymore. ICO nowadays just seems like really complex actual businesses (I see one of these a month), another bunch of ideas that have a good idea but nothing else, and the rest just pure scams.

Anyway, the community has come to a state where they will probably find out for themselves the scams, and it's pretty obvious if the bounty manager picks the money over his reputation, and since your not going extremely in-depth into the well-made scams (I'm not asking you to dedicate all your time to do this), seems just pointless IMO.

Bounty managers just need to do their job. Spend an hour on the ICO, and there's no way you let things like a plagiarized whitepaper or a fake team past.

Could try and charge a fee for this though "Extreme Audit of your ICO"

Basically before taking any campaign obviously its managers responsibility to verify the project properly. Its not only a matter of getting money from projects owners but also investors fate is connected with this. Undoubtedly which bounty managers are careful enough to provide best projects for investors have already been popular here on this forum. As a result they are getting best bounty hunters who are helping them by doing massive amount of quality promotions. So finally both sides are getting benefited. As same as if one of their project prove as scam or something like that then obviously it's bad reputation gonna touch him.

IMO its better to let them handle those things with their own knowledge and experience.

This should serve as a lesson for bounty managers who still do not do their own research, they take some random projects instead to get more income. I support your position on this issue, you have made the right conclusions and made the right decision not to do what the bounty managers should do.

This should also serve as a motivation for existing managers to do their own investigations if they have not done so before, and perhaps this will improve the quality of projects and clean up the forum by reducing the number of fraudulent schemes.

Offer your services as a researcher rather than a public face of vetting projects. This is still a valuable service I think will be useful for managers, except you explicitly leave the final culpability with the managers. You would be simply selling your time rather than making public declarations about the legitimacy of the project in question and instead provide private reports to managers. Just make sure you have the manager explicitly state that you are to take no responsibility for the validity of any of the information as part of the agreement, and final vetting decisions are theirs to make based on the information presented along with their own due diligence.

Good that you decided not to provide this service. Otherwise, you at the end could have destroyed your reputation even though your intention is good.
You are here for some times now and made a good name for busting scammers and fake ICO. As long as you are doing it for free, no one will blame you for anything.

Thanks everyone for input your opinion,  I got my answer from discussion. I have realized that, today or tomorrow peoples will blame to me when a project will turn into scam. Because managers will try to save himself by blaming me if project turn into scam. Then so many questions will raise from managers, investors and hunters. And I am not going to ruin my reputation for such services with any cost.


So I have decided that, I am not going to open such as services That's true managers should do their own diligence before take any projects. If someone do have have enough ability to do their own diligence then they do not have right to manage or involve with any projects. I will just continue my research like before.

Here is some tools that would help you to do some basic diligence, if someone like to do something for community then feel free.

1. Guidelines, how to spot a scam ICO & report effectively
2. [Guide] Prevent scam!!! Some useful tools for find scam / fake ICO team

I will keep this thread open for discussion, if you have some creative and new ideas that would help our community  then feel free to share.

I guess this is where the whole point of this discussion turns null.

Being a manager must be a serious job as it involves lots of people's efforts and owner's money. Also, managers must have the big responsibility to keep this forum spam-free. When a manager do not have enough time, how they will effectively manage? (No point of arguing having time for managing but no time for due diligence).

Please support ONLY the managers who do all their responsibilities. Out-sourcing some of the responsibilities will make the situation more worst than the current state of bounty hunting/managing.

It's best to stick to reporting scam bounty projects and teams and tagging the bounty manager if he is seen to be knowingly promoting a scam bounty campaign. As others said, this job is solely the bounty manager's responsibility and we have known many bounty managers not caring about a scam project and still promoting it. Also, the recent scam projects have had an active team and active MVP but have still turned scam as they did not want to work on the project. Nothing can be done in such cases as it's a lost cause.

They should be bound by an agreement that they have to work on the project till the end unless there is some legal issue or unforeseen circumstance under which they can't proceed else they will have to pay back investors. But there will never be such a legal agreement between them and investors.

It definitely makes sense and reminds me of the experience gained after talking with some bounty managers. Precisely, trustworthy managers must conduct due diligince and usually do their own research without relying on third-party services.

They have earned their reputation and gained vast experience in managing campaigns, they know everything about the responsibility assigned to them, that is why users trust them.

Scam fighters have proven that they can be trusted when it comes to finding certain signs of fraud, but this is not a panacea, because everyone should take responsibility for own decisions.

I believe that to do what you are saying it is not necessary to create a team (although I have no problem with you creating your team and putting your idea into practice), even now, tomorrow or any day a bounty manager can ask you for help to see if any projects are scam or not and you can help them or not help them will depend of your. But I see nothing wrong with providing this service as long as you do not ask for money to provide that service

I've had a few offers like that and it felt like attempts to shift responsibility to someone else.

Make no mistake, if shit hits the fan you'll find yourself under the bus in a jiffy. In order for this to work there would have to be a substantial amount of trust between you and the bounty manager, and it seems to me that trustworthy managers are already doing due diligence on their own.

That's not to say you can't help reputable bounty managers with those background checks... Just be careful who you work with and make sure that everyone involved knows what to expect.

I agree to this, teaching them how to do it (by providing an EDU thread) would be a lot better. They learn, don't need to depend on you, and decide for themselves if they will work on a specific project. IMO the manager is the first person responsible in checking the project. Saying they do not have enough time does not make sense (for me), because if that's the case they shouldn't accept such job in the first place.

Anyway, while reading this I remember the proverb "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."

If you are providing a service, then you should charge a fee.

Basically you're offering to do a background check for managers. Let's face it, most managers are not doing this themselves, and I believe it should be a mandatory step before a bounty can be launched.

Look at the scam accusations section. There are probably 300 scam bounties posted in there. In most cases, if a background check was performed there wouldn't be an accusation made because most of the projects wouldn't have passed.

The forum should make this a mandatory step in order for teams to be able to launch a project. No background check, no access to using the forum. I doubt theymos would implement this as a rule, but he should.

My first thought is...

This can be a good opportunity for bounty managers to avoid frankly fraudulent projects. Managers look for the project they are going to manage, send it to that service, and there this project passes a quick check for suspicious factors.

Each project gets its rating, it can be either "very bad" or "not as bad as very bad" for example. Naturally, a good rating is not assigned, so as not to serve as advice on investing.

The question is...

Do they really need such an opportunity? In my experience, I have never received questions from bounty managers regarding a specific project, questions come from bounty hunters who did not want to waste their time.

Moreover, I myself tried to contact the bounty manager and asked him about the projects that he was going to manage. My request was to provide a list of projects so that I could check them, the request was rejected.

I would support this idea if several people are required to confirm accusation, and not just one member.
Even then, we can never be 100% sure if project is legit or scam.
It can only be considered as opinion/recommendation, and only on request

Researching is part of their job not yours. Its their obligation not yours in actual. Just make an [EDU] thread on how to check Fake Team, Plagiarized whitepaper. I think these are the basics which everyone should know and should do and doing it for them will make them going it out of their habit and relying on you guys or your service all the time to do it for them.

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Very good point [+1]

Even if the project has real team and has an original whitepaper they can still become scam later. In this situation people will find partly blaming you guys for making a report and definetely your reputation will be dragged down with them as well.

We will not make any especial announcement about any project nor we are going to submit report publicly, just bounty managers will know the report. And report will not contain much information, like below,

Team: Fake,
Whitepaper: plagiarized.
Legitimacy claim of team; false.

So our report will be like normal scam accusation nothing special. If we are unable to find team fake team photo then we will mark " team photo no match with any other people's over internet", we will not say team is 100% real is there is not appropriate evidence. That's the way we will submit report. And it will be between us and bounty managers. We will not encourage someone to make investment. We will do it for bounty managers only not for investors.

The idea is good however if a report comes out wrong and people blames the report for losing their funds then who will take the responsibility of the loss? This is why my best believe that the forum itself does not moderate scams.

Careful before making a step. The road is very slippery. good luck with whatever you decide.

Few days back I have been suggested by multiple bounty manager about open a service for them. But I wasn't not responded since I was busy with my family (due to vacation). I am bit free lately although I have joined my job. So I am wondering to open that service only for bounty managers (not for team, investors or hunters).

As per bounty manager they do not have enough time & experiences to do their own diligence before take any project. In a result lot of scam projects entering on this forum and managers are losing their reputation, investors losing fund and hunters losing time & rewards. As you all know that there is few user that who are reporting such as scams.

So I am wondering to build a team with that users who are most active on reporting scam projects. That team will do their diligence for bounty manager. And submit a report to bounty manager about investigation. If we found any suspicious thing then we will make post on direct scam accusation and inform bounty manager about situation. We will not post investigation result publicly if there is no any suspicious thing or we will not rate any ICO projects. Because if we say that is good project then someone would invest on that project, if incase project skip with fund then people will blame us. That service will be only for bounty managers, not for project themselves. We will not give any investigation report if there is no any bounty managers. We only investigate basic thing which is indicator of scam like fake team, legitimacy of their claim, plagiarized whitepaper and content etc. We will not responsible for any exit scam because a real team could be exit with fund. That's why report will be only with bounty manager, and it will depend on him that he will manage a project or not. We will not suggest anything to bounty manager. But we will follow normal processes when someone will manage project with like fake team, plagiarized content or whatever.


So by this service manager could save time and their reputation as well. We will not charge anything or we will not ask for any payment. But yes, whoever  will research for a bounty manager then they deserve something. That's why a donation address will be there, if bounty manager like to pay something then it will be much appreciated. Donation address will be visible publicly and all the received payment will be consider as donations only. We might reserve right to deny any bounty manager's request.

There is no any chances to take bribe from someone, because we are not posting any information if project not suspicious.

So I believe by this service bounty managers, hunters & this community will be benefited. Scam hunters would more encourage since they would get donations. So if community think it will be useful then I will go ahead and I will choose most active scam hunters.


What is your thought?