Topic: Vidy (Vidycoin) Scammed Bounty Hunters for $100k + gross negligence (Read 100 times)
September 30, 2019, 12:01:36 PM
this topic should be move to scam accusation thread here ; https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=83.0 .
September 11, 2019, 04:21:53 AM
This is going to be a long-winded post, so bear with me.
We first approached Will (then one of the Vidy team) about Vidy's ongoing bounty as we felt like it wasn't having the traction it should have.
After a bit of messaging back and forth, we reached a deal that we would be paid 2% of the bounty as can be shown on the following image:
https://imgur.com/F86zv7Z
Will refers to having messaged the team about making us admins (hard to understand how they weren't aware of the bounty):
https://imgur.com/a/Ll1Bbp6
An issue with a bounty hunter appeared on the bounty channel and I was messaged by Will. I handled the situation and also messaged Alphonse (official member of Vidy's team) about it to which he replied and was very happy about the way the situation was handled. This conversation in the meanwhile was deleted by Alphonse.
Vidy extended the bounty without letting us know so I messaged Will about it.
https://imgur.com/a/Xt7r5Jt
We worked out another deal with Will about an extension of the bounty which raised the value from 2.0% to 2.3%.
https://imgur.com/a/hfycp3B
https://imgur.com/a/MoMNQMo
Then Will stopped replying to PMs once the bounty was finally over.
https://imgur.com/a/ON4oNWO
I also attempted to contact Alphonse since he was around the time of the bounty and was also aware that we were handling the bounty for Vidy.
He just redirected me to their CEO (Patrick):
https://imgur.com/a/BHdVl5E
https://imgur.com/a/XovJF0H
https://imgur.com/a/4B2rAY1
https://imgur.com/a/k6e5WFH
Fun fact: After Patrick's Vidy CEO mentioned to us Will a scammer the whole time (months after the bounty was concluded) he was still an admin of their main Telegram group (awkward):
https://imgur.com/a/j4zDxGi
Our arrangement was to simply handle the spreadsheets for the VIDY bounty. This essentially means that Bountycloud was responsible for accepting/rejecting members, checking the work (as per the rules). We did not reach an agreement finalize the stakes after the bounty period, nor handle distribution of the bounty rewards.
In a private group with the project CEO, he vaguely indicates that his group had no idea what NAME was doing, and that he was somehow a scammer. Bearing in mind that this "scammer" seemingly had access to their Bitcointalk account and was able to promote me to admin status within the bounty support group. I have attached a screenshot of this below.
https://i.imgur.com/OoIbOn5.png
In the same private chat with the group, we were promised partial compensation, though he didn't appear to indicate that the bounty hunters would be rewarded for their work based on the rules of the bounty.
https://i.imgur.com/fA6TpSS.png
Below is a screenshot of the VIDY bounty group, here we can see that Will was promoted to full admin status by Luke (the group creator). Luke also invited the VIDY CEO @pcboston to the group (the same person we were talking to in private chat—yes we did check the usernames were the same). I was promoted to admin by Luke, which indicates he and Will must have been in communication for this to happen.
https://i.imgur.com/EPKWSt4.png
However, the VIDY CEO argues that he didn't actually sign off on the bounty, indicating that it was being run and operated without his permission.
https://i.imgur.com/Mb0UYlQ.png
However, the bounty was openly promoted in the official VIDYCOIN group on numerous occasions by admins of the group, including Will and Luke. Similarly, Luke is directly mentioned as the contact for the bounty within the bounty thread itself;
https://i.imgur.com/y9FB91x.png
The quote can be seen in this thread here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.41703948
Interestingly, this specific part was edited out of the original thread, seemingly because the team was trying to break the link between official usernames and the bounty.
As the end of the initial bounty period drew to a close, we were then informed that they would be extending the bounty, but they refused to pay us any additional tokens. Because of this, we forfeited the role under the assumption that the VIDY team would duly take over the responsbility.
VIDY also scammed hundreds of bounty hunters. According to the bounty rules laid out here, bounty participants should have been paid on a stake-allocated basis. This means that whoever contributes the most valuable, high-quality work should be better rewarded. The bounty indicates that a total of 50 million VIDY were allocated to bounty hunters.
However, rather than paying people on a stake-basis, VIDY instead opted to send everyone between 10,000 and 20,000 VIDY each, even though numerous bounty hunters were owed FAR more.
Curiously, the bounty company attributes the reward reduction to removing bots from the campaign. However, regardless of this, the entire reward (50M) should be distributed on a stake basis. Removing the bots should mean that the remaining successful members receive higher, not lower rewards. Also, the CEO claims to have no knowledge of the bounty, and yet they clearly refer to it as "our bounty" in the below blog post associated with the official vidy.com domain. Similarly, the stats say that they removed ICO spamming accounts and banned accounts from the reward pool, however, the original bounty ruleset did not mention anything about disallowing this. Bountycloud knew this particular bounty rule-set was not sufficient to control spam, however, the team (or Will), refused our offer to revamp and relaunch the bounty under a better rule-set, refusing to pay our fee. Based on this, we believe the bounty hunters should be paid based on the original conditions of the bounty.
https://blog.vidy.com/vidycoin-bounty-campaign-announcement/
We have attached a screenshot below, just in case they try to edit the blog post.
https://i.imgur.com/jCwmGtd.png
Not only this, but they also enforced a new KYC-requirement that was not initially outlined in the bounty terms and conditions. Similarly, Will (Telegram admin) specifically noted that KYC was not required in the bounty group. Bear in mind that VIDY forced potentially hundreds of bounty hunters to go through KYC, with no prior warning, after months of absense, while enforcing a strict time limit (bounty hunters had 12-days to submit). This inevitably means numerous bounty hunters were not rewarded. Not only this, but 10,000 VIDY is currently worth about $20 as of writing. Pretty cheap way to acquire someone's personal data?
https://i.imgur.com/JrLoiph.png
I have collected some initial comments from affected bounty hunters, these are outlined below. These will be added when I return home in a couple of days.
Not only this, but VIDY also disappeared for months, leaving both us and the bounty hunters in limbo as to whether they will receive their payments.
I suspect that once VIDY was listed on an exchange, the aggregate value of the 50 million VIDY was too high for them to give away, leading them to change their mind. They forget that the bounty hunters helped their project succeed in the FIRST PLACE, and bounty payments should have been distributed well before the project was even listed.
If the CEO of the company didn't know that his subordinates had promised 0.5% of the total supply to a bounty, then this is a case of serious negligence, ignorance and mismanagement.
Now, this project is apparently up for consideration to be added to Binance;
https://www.binance.com/en/support/articles/360034599051
We do not think a company capable of such fraud and/or negligence should be listed on Binance, hence why we are posting this message as a warning to the community, to Binance and to any other potential partners that are currently in negotiations with Vidy.
We first approached Will (then one of the Vidy team) about Vidy's ongoing bounty as we felt like it wasn't having the traction it should have.
After a bit of messaging back and forth, we reached a deal that we would be paid 2% of the bounty as can be shown on the following image:
https://imgur.com/F86zv7Z
Will refers to having messaged the team about making us admins (hard to understand how they weren't aware of the bounty):
https://imgur.com/a/Ll1Bbp6
An issue with a bounty hunter appeared on the bounty channel and I was messaged by Will. I handled the situation and also messaged Alphonse (official member of Vidy's team) about it to which he replied and was very happy about the way the situation was handled. This conversation in the meanwhile was deleted by Alphonse.
Vidy extended the bounty without letting us know so I messaged Will about it.
https://imgur.com/a/Xt7r5Jt
We worked out another deal with Will about an extension of the bounty which raised the value from 2.0% to 2.3%.
https://imgur.com/a/hfycp3B
https://imgur.com/a/MoMNQMo
Then Will stopped replying to PMs once the bounty was finally over.
https://imgur.com/a/ON4oNWO
I also attempted to contact Alphonse since he was around the time of the bounty and was also aware that we were handling the bounty for Vidy.
He just redirected me to their CEO (Patrick):
https://imgur.com/a/BHdVl5E
https://imgur.com/a/XovJF0H
https://imgur.com/a/4B2rAY1
https://imgur.com/a/k6e5WFH
Fun fact: After Patrick's Vidy CEO mentioned to us Will a scammer the whole time (months after the bounty was concluded) he was still an admin of their main Telegram group (awkward):
https://imgur.com/a/j4zDxGi
Our arrangement was to simply handle the spreadsheets for the VIDY bounty. This essentially means that Bountycloud was responsible for accepting/rejecting members, checking the work (as per the rules). We did not reach an agreement finalize the stakes after the bounty period, nor handle distribution of the bounty rewards.
In a private group with the project CEO, he vaguely indicates that his group had no idea what NAME was doing, and that he was somehow a scammer. Bearing in mind that this "scammer" seemingly had access to their Bitcointalk account and was able to promote me to admin status within the bounty support group. I have attached a screenshot of this below.
https://i.imgur.com/OoIbOn5.png
In the same private chat with the group, we were promised partial compensation, though he didn't appear to indicate that the bounty hunters would be rewarded for their work based on the rules of the bounty.
https://i.imgur.com/fA6TpSS.png
Below is a screenshot of the VIDY bounty group, here we can see that Will was promoted to full admin status by Luke (the group creator). Luke also invited the VIDY CEO @pcboston to the group (the same person we were talking to in private chat—yes we did check the usernames were the same). I was promoted to admin by Luke, which indicates he and Will must have been in communication for this to happen.
https://i.imgur.com/EPKWSt4.png
However, the VIDY CEO argues that he didn't actually sign off on the bounty, indicating that it was being run and operated without his permission.
https://i.imgur.com/Mb0UYlQ.png
However, the bounty was openly promoted in the official VIDYCOIN group on numerous occasions by admins of the group, including Will and Luke. Similarly, Luke is directly mentioned as the contact for the bounty within the bounty thread itself;
https://i.imgur.com/y9FB91x.png
The quote can be seen in this thread here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.41703948
Interestingly, this specific part was edited out of the original thread, seemingly because the team was trying to break the link between official usernames and the bounty.
As the end of the initial bounty period drew to a close, we were then informed that they would be extending the bounty, but they refused to pay us any additional tokens. Because of this, we forfeited the role under the assumption that the VIDY team would duly take over the responsbility.
VIDY also scammed hundreds of bounty hunters. According to the bounty rules laid out here, bounty participants should have been paid on a stake-allocated basis. This means that whoever contributes the most valuable, high-quality work should be better rewarded. The bounty indicates that a total of 50 million VIDY were allocated to bounty hunters.
However, rather than paying people on a stake-basis, VIDY instead opted to send everyone between 10,000 and 20,000 VIDY each, even though numerous bounty hunters were owed FAR more.
Curiously, the bounty company attributes the reward reduction to removing bots from the campaign. However, regardless of this, the entire reward (50M) should be distributed on a stake basis. Removing the bots should mean that the remaining successful members receive higher, not lower rewards. Also, the CEO claims to have no knowledge of the bounty, and yet they clearly refer to it as "our bounty" in the below blog post associated with the official vidy.com domain. Similarly, the stats say that they removed ICO spamming accounts and banned accounts from the reward pool, however, the original bounty ruleset did not mention anything about disallowing this. Bountycloud knew this particular bounty rule-set was not sufficient to control spam, however, the team (or Will), refused our offer to revamp and relaunch the bounty under a better rule-set, refusing to pay our fee. Based on this, we believe the bounty hunters should be paid based on the original conditions of the bounty.
https://blog.vidy.com/vidycoin-bounty-campaign-announcement/
We have attached a screenshot below, just in case they try to edit the blog post.
https://i.imgur.com/jCwmGtd.png
Not only this, but they also enforced a new KYC-requirement that was not initially outlined in the bounty terms and conditions. Similarly, Will (Telegram admin) specifically noted that KYC was not required in the bounty group. Bear in mind that VIDY forced potentially hundreds of bounty hunters to go through KYC, with no prior warning, after months of absense, while enforcing a strict time limit (bounty hunters had 12-days to submit). This inevitably means numerous bounty hunters were not rewarded. Not only this, but 10,000 VIDY is currently worth about $20 as of writing. Pretty cheap way to acquire someone's personal data?
https://i.imgur.com/JrLoiph.png
I have collected some initial comments from affected bounty hunters, these are outlined below. These will be added when I return home in a couple of days.
Not only this, but VIDY also disappeared for months, leaving both us and the bounty hunters in limbo as to whether they will receive their payments.
I suspect that once VIDY was listed on an exchange, the aggregate value of the 50 million VIDY was too high for them to give away, leading them to change their mind. They forget that the bounty hunters helped their project succeed in the FIRST PLACE, and bounty payments should have been distributed well before the project was even listed.
If the CEO of the company didn't know that his subordinates had promised 0.5% of the total supply to a bounty, then this is a case of serious negligence, ignorance and mismanagement.
Now, this project is apparently up for consideration to be added to Binance;
https://www.binance.com/en/support/articles/360034599051
We do not think a company capable of such fraud and/or negligence should be listed on Binance, hence why we are posting this message as a warning to the community, to Binance and to any other potential partners that are currently in negotiations with Vidy.
Jump to: