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In order to avoid bounty scams you need to consider 2 things:

1. CHECK THE PROJECT - you need to do research about the bounty, the project team, the whitepaper because some might just copy and paste it, the advisors, roadmap, bounty pool and ofcourse the founder you need to be a good observer, check their background because sometimes by just merely observing and reading you will know right away if the bounty is a scam.

2. CAMPAIGN MANAGER - the one that you should always consider, because if the bounty manager is scammer then the bounties itself is a scam, and it is really obvious if the bounty manager has a negative trust then surely he or she is scammer, one thing to consider also is the rank of the bounty manager the higher the rank the higher the legit factor, you can always do research here there are many list of legit and reliable bounty manager and the list of all bounty manager scammers.


thank you for your kindness!
hope it helps!
more power!

Hate to say this but yes, you cannot trust a project but you can trust a reputable bounty manager, just as I have always done on this forum. The only times I have gotten "scammed" is when I participated in direct bounties that program people distributed. Every campaign I joined - including signature campaign like this one I still am in,,, I get paid when the manager is trusted and reputable. Track record and responsibility are very rare in this space. And they will not take charge of projects which they know are scam.

Campaign manager reputation would really be a great factor that a project would be a good one but not precisely 100% but high chances that it wont be ending on scam but there are several managers which are newbie did able to succeed either those people are the project community manager itself do have experience on handling bounty campaigns.You can also risk on joining that if you do see its really worth to join on.Risk of being scammed is less but we should not say 100% because even how professional we are on a certain field there are really instances where we do lose up money.

I agree on the things listed by OP.

As for me, I always checked the integrity of the project's website & the team composition. If I see that the website is well-built, it gives me a little assurance that the project must be real and legit.
Also, I do a google image search using the team pictures to verify if they are a "real" person and not just a made up name and stolen identity. (this always work)

Its a nice advise but I don't think that its enough to say that the project is legit. I hope that you are aware that there was one bounty manager who is very trusted but his reputation was ruined because of a scam project. As for the project, yes you have to check everything, however, I also did notice that there's scam project everywhere and its really hard to filter the legit ones and even if you look at the team behind, chances are some of them might turn out to a scammer. Just used common sense and due diligence of course just invest what you can afford.

Some more tips:

1) Go for projects where you see reputed members applying.

2) Ensure that the funds are escrowed.

3) It is also a good idea to drop a pm to the manger before joining, especially if this is his first campaign to see how responsive he is.

And you think this advice will be followed by people who are always on the lookout for the bounty announcement threads they want to enrol all of their alts? (a quick check on the reputation subcategory of those abusing the bounty campaigns will give an insight on what I am saying where an individual can enrol up to 30 alts sometimes I wonder if its a machine doing that) and the promoters are more concerned about how much they would raise in their pre-ICO and ICO with less focus on the quality or campaigns which means before a genuine applicant is through with those findings, the list is already full.

The only easy one is the campaign manager which is even not a guarantee as we have seen reputable managers fall short of expectation at some point. Do your research if you are convinced put in for it, and it if not pull out and stop blaming someone else, the mod, DT members, popular senior guys, or even the global administrator of not doing enough.

you are correct, the problem that we have and that people know that project X is not good quality, does not show some seriousness and even with many red flags these people still insist on participating bounty


you should do your own research and the fact that the bounty manager is on some project does not mean that the bounty manager has some power to ensure that the project is legitimate and will not become scam unless in some cases the bounty manager knows the project is scam and still remains bounty manager, but overall the bounty manager is not a member of the project team, he can also be deceived.

This is absolutely the right way to do before participating on any bounty/signature campaigns but most people here will ignore this because of greediness to earn more. All they want is fast and easy money but they don't want to spend time to do research about the company/projects that they want to work with, and most of these people end up earning nothing because they didn't get paid for the reason that the project is a scam. Campaign manger is also a factor, most ICOs or companies that are being managed by reputable managers here in the forum are those legit ones, but I'm not saying that if the campaign manager is reputable you should not research the ICO/company that you want to participate with. It's still your obligation to know everything about them.

It's not always necessary to ensure funds are escrowed on some signature campaigns if the organization is trusted and the person organizing the campaign is trustworthy (in the case of FortuneJack), but it's generally true that you should apply for campaigns that have escrowed funds whenever possible.

I also avoid bounty campaigns in Bitcointalk for alts 100% of the time as they're often plagued with alt accounts and most coins don't go anywhere, with some rare exceptions here and there. By joining a BTC-based signature campaign you lower risks of coin prices crashing.

As for reputable signature campaign managers, Hhampuz hasn't previously done a lot with campaigns, but he's a good manager in every respect, and the same goes for Lutpin and Yahoo62278. I've participated in many campaigns managed by them, and I have nothing bad to say about them at all.

You're correct and the bounty campaign reputation is the first thing I usually go for before picking any bounty. After, I check the project roadmap and the team involve past work and how they putting things together for the project. Plus, I dont go for bounty with token, I go for the bounty that are __coin and must listed on exchange or about to and this is where the road map is very important.
 This  works for me so far.

Real newbies actually worming around beginners and help section mate not here. I really looking to help them you can better move this thread to there. Even that would be much useful one.
Other than every should reach more about the project before they go to invest and join in bounties. To safer side, you can be part of some good bounty campaign managers project. They are reliable in payment. You may find notification op says payment is not responsible by the manager. Please do not join those kind of campaigns at all.

I am mostly dependent upon the manager. The things you said are both right one and works best while together. But dont know many times I rely upon the manager a lot as they give me more confidence and the campaign looks too friendly too. My strategy is that, when trusted manager starts the campaign then I believe he might have tested it earlier too as he will spending a lot of time and efforts on it. Thus it gets me more confidence about it and I can just start working with full speed on it.  So yeah plus one to all those managers who make the things happen right for us. :P

You are right OP. Most users don't bother to check out the campaign before jumping into it. They are just in a rush to make money. Many bounty hunters just look at the topic of the bounty and won't even bother making a back ground check to consider if its worth before entering into. Many ICOs may be good but yet the managers won't pay.

You may seems to make good points,  but the truth is, it's quite difficult to find good ICOs now, most bounty hunters are just interested in making money but ends up accumulating shit coins which are scams ICOs. If they are a bit lucky enough, they may end up tossing it away in an exchange immediately have and it is being listed. this becomes bad for investors who bought the tokens or coins in high quantity

By checking those factors mentioned by OP, it will lead to a legit bounty campaign or maybe, not. You can find a lot of bounty campaigns where you can receive the payment (token/altcoins) which is the main reason of this thread right?
But the thing is there a lot of campaigns paid their bounty participants on time but there are only 1-3 out of 10 projects got listed there token/altcoin in the market and it even takes some time at least 4-8 months of waiting before you can trade those coins, so the rest are useless. That's why it's risky joining this bounty campaigns that pays token/altcoins that doesn't have any value yet, you will waste time and effort promoting those guys and get nothing.

Sometimes even the project managed by the reputed managers will turn into scam and sometime the managers are also be a part of that scam project for instance aTriz is on of the reputed signature and bounty manager but he tries to scam the investors by giving fake credentials about that project but later on he ruined his life by himself so doing own research is important while participating bounties.Yes,you are right,even ater we got tokens from capmaigns it is useless dead weight until it get listed on excnage and most of the time it never get listed on anywhere so people need to be careful while doing bounty campaigns that is the reason I am not interested in campaigns which pays us in token or in altcoins.

These reason only makes the people to come towards to bitcoin paying signature campaigns. Apart from this I see that you can be part of the campaigns like Byteball or Dimcoin campaign which is opened on services section.
These are really good be a part of it. When I am looking to apply on the bounty campaign. Initially I check the manager and I check the project road map. If they have the project which has the long time view to start it. I will never choose that kind of campaigns at all.

Yes if we want to be easy in analyzing a bounty then we can see the manager handling it. Campaign managers who already have a good reputation and professional course will have a good success rate. Usually the manager will monitor and perform analysis of a campaign. So we're not too tired to do the analysis, a qualified manager has done it and the project they are promoting is certainly a chance to succeed.

Yes, this is mostly I do when I joining bounty campaign. Being a participant you are the responsibility to research further more about the project and the second thing is the well-known manager will know about that bounty project so much better to participate bounties in a high rank and reputed managers. Bounty hunter depends on your luck that the project will succeed or fail.

Thanks for the information. But do you have a list of campaign managers who are not scammers.??

check this thread, it's a list of legit bounties.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3307997.0

credit to: @tvplus006
he always keep the table updated

Yes, definitely, you can really rely to the  Manager at all if it is reputable to manage it or not because most of the low rank managers where just scam at all.

I think a bounty hunter in this forum should first learn to post good article that will contribute to the knowledge of other users in this forum before thinking of joining bounty campaigns. The mistakes new bounty hunters make is to register in this forum and start  shit-posting. Let's not make it look like this forum is only meant for gaining coins without other additional purpose.

Bountyhunter and bountyhive are really helpful to find the good ICO bounty projects so far. I think if moderators makes any work like finding the scam project in the initial time itself. You can get the more money if you choose the right ICO has potential.
If you work for scam projects. You will not get the tokens for the work you do for them as well.
I think admin needs to take action against the scam bounties on this forum. If not these people will scam the forumers for sure.

That's big correct, it's time to filter those bounty project who intend to scam and fooled participants and also investors.
This is really challenging to MOD here that to take action on that kind of shady activity not only members also those scam project.

Meanwhile, OP post is really informative you can apply those ideas to searching and bounty hunters.
How lucky you are if you find potential bounties that have a successful launching and have a great value in the market.

I totally agree with that, you should add also that the ICO should have strong partnership.

Very few come up with full scheduled plans for the program and has got legitimacy in their activities. In between due to economic situation it gets worse and falls under the scam. Getting rid of such campaigns is really hard and another thing is planned scams, where the major focus is to scam the user with the name of their bounty. It is easily findable going through their Ann thread.

The legit ICO, they usually choose trustworthy bounty campaign managers. I usually follow the campaign of these managers to avoid scams.

The case that is currently popular is bounty manager Jamaal ejaz who is suspected of deceiving the tokenpay campaign.
He's a popular manager but his reputation is doubtful at the moment.

Just stick with well-known campaign managers.
If you saw a newbie manager without any previous work before, then you can turn on your caution signal.
You can also see whether the campaign has escrow or not, obviously escrow are not going to be used on ICO campaigns, but on regular Signature Campaign it should give you a relief that your coins are stored on third party in case the campaign ran away without paying their participants.

Famous managers are not guaranteed to get a good bounty. we still have to analyze the performance of managers.
disappointed with one of the managers and he did a great cheating.

No guarantee at all since they doesn't hold the funds of the investors and the only thing managers can do is to sympathize their participants if there's a scam happened. Maybe we should assume that always we cannot get a huge success upon joining on some bounty camps but lets define it as gamble and we may have a high chances to earn huge if our camp pays huge.

Managers has the job to analyze their potential campaign to see whether those campaigns are scams or not.
Even though there are no 100% fool proof method to do this, most scam campaign can easily be seen from their whitepaper, lack of communication, etc.
An experienced manager has enough campaigns on his/her previous work that they know when a company smells fishy.

Do you mean him?
I thought it was revealed recently that his account were bought.

I would like to point out that just because the user has a negative trust does not mean he is a scammer. Some members got a negative trust due to both quality of their posts and spamming the forum. Added to that, you cannot tell that the user is a scammer if he is a newbie. Some newbies have real good intentions. Moreover, you can tell that he is a scam if the content itself is not well-detailed and that he asks you to download something (could be a virus).

We don't know how people will react to bounty because after cheating by bounty manager definitely they will not tolerate because they will do the work for entire two month without problem by believing the bounty manager.

In order to avoid bounty scams you need to consider 2 things:

1. CHECK THE PROJECT - you need to do research about the bounty, the project team, the whitepaper because some might just copy and paste it, the advisors, roadmap, bounty pool and ofcourse the founder you need to be a good observer, check their background because sometimes by just merely observing and reading you will know right away if the bounty is a scam.

2. CAMPAIGN MANAGER - the one that you should always consider, because if the bounty manager is scammer then the bounties itself is a scam, and it is really obvious if the bounty manager has a negative trust then surely he or she is scammer, one thing to consider also is the rank of the bounty manager the higher the rank the higher the legit factor, you can always do research here there are many list of legit and reliable bounty manager and the list of all bounty manager scammers.


My reply:

Thank you for this very helpful and informative post.  I am also new in bounty campaign and do not know yet how to choose a liget bounty campaign.  I will use  this information in searching my second bounty campaign.

Well, thoroughly checking a user's trust summary is a must---who gave him and why (reference).

And yeah he could not be a scammer but failing to follow the "simple" rules here could hint his incompetency. Most renowned managers wouldn't just accept to run every campaign they are asked to, as they have their own standards to be filled so sketchy offers would be declined. Now if the manager got negged for spamming or not following the rules, wouldn't you doubt his competency?


Yeah there could be, particularly those ICO teams who chose their own people to run their campaign, but this would be a case-by-case basis since anyone could hire and create a good content as well as attractive graphics. I would avoid them personally though.

Yes I also believe that only believing on managers will not work. Sometimes it happen that a company come to hire a well reputable manager and then they escape away cheating with the community and with the manager too. Better option is that we research ourselves about the project and we see that how the experts rate this ICO if the ICO is just alien in the community then it is a doubtful and do not spend your time for that type of ICO.

The first one that I actually look at when I am finding a good campaign is the campaign manager. The higher the rank is, the more trusted the bounty manager because he will not risk his account by managing a scam project and it is an assumption that he is already knowledgeable when it comes to campaign because he is in the forum for some time already. The next to search is a good project. If the project is already a partner of other ICOs then it would become one of the proofs that it is reputable especially if it has successful Pre-ICO. Constant update of their social media accounts is also a factor.

That is a good Idea , I myself also check the ICO ranking on ICOBENCH , And check the rank of Bounty manager , Usually high ranked don't put themselves in trouble with scam bounties , Some of the good bounties get filled very soon , that is a good sign too!

Seems logical, but it's impossible to succeed all the time with bounties, with signature campaigns too. I was a participant of couple of such campaigns that promise good terms and stable payments, but after a week they say 'we do not have founds' or something like that.  In general, the user can't protect himself from any kind of stuff that is happening on the forum.

I have experienced the same. Even though the bounty campaign seems legit, has a reputable manager, sometimes the ICO still can run off without paying anything. Nothing you can really do about it.

That's not the case always.You're just stereotyping the obvious things.Bounty can be turned into a scam even if all the details are legit.You can get white-papers written for as cheap as $10 bucks so considering it as a valid reason is not okay.

Accounts can be bought in the forum and higher rank adds no credibility to the account unless they're backed by relevant feedbacks.This point is also useless as a good bounty manager may end up working for a bad project and visa-versa.

I hate that term.Do you guys hail from a specific country where this term is often used to describe something ?

I do completely agree with 1st point of check the project .
but regarding campaign manager rank in forum , then want to tell you something that i saw many good projects use service of full member rank manager , even some do manage bounty themselves so they have only junior member rank account .

yes it can happen only in case where project team is not serious of their promises .
also if a project don't fulfill bounty campaign rewards then high chances it may scam its investors too , either they should not announce bounty or if they do then not to scam people who promote them for many months .

Campaign managers play great role in ascertaining the authenticity of bounty programs for sure but that should not only be our basis of judgement. Some bounties are managed by coper members (Though am still struggling to understand what this means) and they turn out just fine. My formula have always remained to do my research about the project and its feasibility, find out if they already have a product and how far they have gone with it, check the team and other relevant information.

What I am trying to say is the higher the rank the greater the responsibility. Say for example the bounty manager is legendary he won't risk his account as a legendary knowing that the campaign is a scam and he himself is a scammer. So if the bounty is being managed by a legendary you can't argue that it is not legit.

I dont want to spoil your beliefs but not only having a legendary account into this forum would already signifies legitimacy of a certain project. How about putting up consideration on checking those accounts if being sold or not? There are already instances into this forum where there are legendary accounts do handle out bounties but in the end it turn out to be scam. Always have the awareness and be sensible anytime if you do see suspicious acts.

And in addition, even a so-called trusted campaign manager was hooked by a scam project and a scam bounty campaigns and his affected his rep and even pulled him down, just search about the issue of atriz.
That's why it's so important that you make a thorough research to the project you're wanting to join on their bounty campaigns or just choose a bounty manager that will not make your efforts into waste in promoting those guys.

I think that most managers don't care what campaign they are running. It's all about the money for them. Someone comes and tells them to manage a thread for money and they do it. They aren't responsible for the project because they aren't devs and can't know how it turns out. Check the dev team and the project, not only the manager, unless you want to promote scams.

Yea is true even reputable manager and some other facts cannot stop scams I also participate in many ICO's with very good rating but many run away without any payment or update because they was just created for this purpose

The best advice..

Since I entered the bitcointalk forum I have not yet had experience about the scam bounty campaign. If there's a new bounty campaign  before i apply i always check the thread and the project I am checking every detail that need a bounty and the most important who is the manager of this bounty.

good talks in here


Rule number one, someone legit isn't hiding.

I think project research is somewhat a pretty difficult thing to do especially because the bounty comes at a pretty early stage when even the pre-ico is months away so you have merely a white paper and website to judge the project which is often not enough. So I think the only best way to judge any campaign at such a stage is by taking consideration the campaign manager. Trusted campaign manager is in itself a guarantee that even if the campaign is less fruitful but it will not be a complete scam.

Even with the best managers, what can they do if the project decides to scam and run? I have seen one of my favorite bounty managers recently experienced their first scam after almost a year in operation, in fact 2 projects scammed them in the same day! Terrible blow to them, and of course all the bounty participants generally see whose fault it was and aren't blaming the managers, but you still get a handful of participants screaming for blood and saying that the manager owes them money for their "work".

Dont know if that is true at all or im the only one who thinks this way but both the ways are getting insecure these days. Im sure managers who are best of all will always try to bring up the best campaigns ever. However, many times these projects are getting illegal or scam one when they get at the final stages of the development. Managers has got nothing to do with that but for us its really bad time these days as projects themselves are getting weird. Need to find out some other way round or may be we will never have that opportunity and we will need to keep trying always.

This point would be valid in most of the cases but it must be emphasized that the other way around might not be always true.
Consider the case of trusted bounty managers, they look into the project but if the intentions of the ico's team is to scam everyone they would target the manager too and he might not able to differentiate it.

The best way is to DYOR (Do Your Own Research) whether it be investment of money or your precious time.

But it can't be right in always because when we see a recent scam bounty called bitbliss run by aTriz one of the most reputed manager of our forum,everyone has the price tag even the good managers can be bought by scammers.So do your own research is the best thing we can do before joining in bounties.

DYOR would always been suggested and dont easily fall out into the things where your eyes are seeing. Trust can be attained and sympathy would be get if a certain manager would have a good record but once a mistake had been done then trust would be gone in an instant where you would really hesitate into your next move if you would still follow or continue to engage with it.Not all reputable managers are prone or guaranteed that they wont scam.They might build reputation but in the end Project potential and legitimacy should be always checked.

The first thing that I look for when I want to join a bounty is the campaign manager. The higher the rank, the more trusted the manager but I will prioritize those that already has a reputation in the forum because they would not just waste their account to a scam project but there are times when they are scammed too. Some campaign managers spent their own funds just to compensate the bounty participants so the bounties of these campaign managers are preferable compared to others. I prefer a weekly compensation than a monthly or a bounty paid after ICO but if the project is good then I would just wait for them to distribute it hoping they would compensate the participants as what they promise.


Even if you did your research and you think the project is good. There would be times when the intention of the team behind is to scam all the investors, bounty participants and even the campaign manager. They carefully laid out their plan to get the most out of the project and run away with all the money. We just have to keep trying because in some ways there are still honest ICOs paying the participants on time and as what they promised.

I agree with your number two(2) advice, whenever have a new open bounty or signature campaign I always recognize who is the campaign manager so I know if it's nice to join, I have a favorite manager and I always join his signature campaigns every time he opens a new one.
And for those who are just beginning and willing to join the signature campaign I recommend that you read this thread first for more information.

When you participate in bounty manager is actually matters. If the project actually using the newbie guys they are promoting the project with the own people. Those kind of the bounties are actually scamming the participants by only getting the promotion and they get the crowdfunding mate.

I see this thread bumping with the same answer and agreeing it the same. Instead of that we can add the more information needed to be here or let this thread dead forever guys.

While participating in an bounty it is must to go through the managers details. Apart from the same it is also a must thing to go through the project based on which the particular bounty program is being scheduled. There are more successful bounties which haven't attained big growth just because of lack of marketing. So, various factors would lead towards scam.

Bounty Hunters are risking their times and efforts to join the bounty campaigns. Not only for bounty manager's reputation they will looking, also the ICO project itselves. 

To all the newbies out there, a good example of a good bounty manager is Sylon and Yahoo. They have the most trusted reputation for me. Now compare if those other bounty managers operated the same as those two that I mentioned to make your bounty selection easier.

In this way, we cannot blame the managers because everything seems to be very positive in the beginning but they start raising enough money they will not respond to the investors and to the managers. That's how stupid companies behave so we have research ourselves before investing into any ICO.

Apart from these people many trusted members also in this forum as a escrow and other service workers mate. I believe on yahoo all the time even without escrow. He is the best campaign manager in this forum mate.
Apart from signature campaign, there are many scam attempts really need to care by any moderators but all missing in bounties side and power misuses mate.

Good advice dude. This may help to many people. Also i wanna share some of my point.

Its very difficult to identify whether the ICO is scam or real. But if followed below research we can avoid some scam ICO.

1. Check each team member linkedin acct whether they really promoting their projects or not.

2. Check telegram accounts too. If they dont have real team, you can assume that as scam

3. Dont believe high discount project ICO

4. Do your own research and learn new things. Do not trust others

From my experience, however we check and make our investment some goes as a scam. We cannot avoid those instances, because the project will be good, it'll be having a good development team and if the same lacks in funding the end result will be a failure. This gets mentioned under the scam list. I suggest to have your own research and do the investment, so that whether it is a scam or success it stay within us, no need to blame others.

3. DONT JOIN THEM - Bounties are paid in tokens that is close to have little to no chance of being listed in a good exchange. You might be left holding something that has no value.

Some bounties might have used many fake forum accounts to trick the real accounts that many people want to join the bounty. 

Nowadays we can't easily trust an ICO, to avoid scam ICO you have to go through or study every detail of the project, if possible the project has its existing known infrastructure, realiable personality or team developer behind the project, the product or services it offers is realistic and really addresses the solutions they are targeting to its direct users and also have a great impact and contribution to the crypto community and ecommerce industry. 

It is impossible to identify the scam ICO because until they scam the people. Everything seems to be very interesting because that how they will market their ICO. Until they scam us we cannot identify the project.

Why not! Please do not go with the every ICO project's bounty campaigns first. Before you want to join the campaign analyze the details you see on their website and white paper. This will be give the enough brief about the project.
If you understand the details then only you should join the campaign. Even you can get the tokens from the airdrop also do not share the details KYC to them.
Most of the ICO are scam so follow the manager at least and then go to participate the campaign.