Suggestion: New subforum that blacklist fraudulent projects.

[kahc]

There are so many shit coins and new ICO's that pop up everyday, it is becoming difficult to distinguish fraudulent projects from the serious ones. A lot of reasonable suspicions(scam alert) post/threads get buried as soon as they get posted.
I think it would be great if there exist a subforum under Alternate cryptocurrencies, where the community(or the eager detectives) can provide concrete proofs against suspicious projects ,and then mods/admins can decide if they are to be put on the blacklist/alert-list.
This way the accused have a chance to clear the allegations, and the accuser(s) can also provide further proof without smearing the whole forum.

I think this approach will benefit the bitcointalk community.

• Real, aspiring and serious projects get more exposures.
• This community achieve an overall better reputation and trustworthiness.
• Less scammers.

Whats your thoughts? Take a vote!

[hilariousetc]

I would prefer to just put all ICOs in the trashcan where they belong. Some sort of restrictions need to be put in place on them because any two bit scammer can get away with fraud here at the moment and ICO campaigns are causing at least 95% of the spam and shitposts. One thing I know is something needs to change and they shouldn't be allowed to operate here without repercussions. I think charging them some sort of fee to make their Announcement thread here would go along way and put a stop to a lot of the lazy and cheap scammers straight away. Getting really tired of having to clean up their mess whilst they do absolutely nothing about spam all whilst raking in the money.

[kahc]

I would prefer to just put all ICOs in the trashcan where they belong. Some sort of restrictions need to be put in place on them because any two bit scammer can get away with fraud here at the moment and ICO campaigns are causing at least 95% of the spam and shitposts. One thing I know is something needs to change and they shouldn't be allowed to operate here without repercussions. I think charging them some sort of fee to make their Announcement thread here would go along way and put a stop to a lot of the lazy and cheap scammers straight away. Getting really tired of having to clean up their mess whilst they do absolutely nothing about spam all whilst raking in the money.

That's so true, but banning all ICO's would be unfair to those that actually have a decent and feasible idea. My suggestion with the subforum is a first step towards stricter restriction. 

[hilariousetc]

It's not unfair. What's unfair is staff are left to clean up the puke and shit they spew all over the place day after day. Besides, this is a bitcoin forum not a crowd-funding one. I wouldn't mind if they actually contributed something decent to the world or financially to the forum, but they don't. 99% of them are lazy, cheap scams that rely on lazy, cheap shitposters to promote them for free.

This may be relevant that theymos posted a while back (not sure how it progressed):

I'm getting a bunch of ICOs wanting to advertise on the forum, but I don't have time to do more than a very cursory review of each. Somebody trustworthy needs to set up a certification service that will work like this:

An ICO will pay you to apply for a certification. You will then spend many hours thoroughly reviewing everything about them in order to determine that they're at least basically sane. Some things that you should maybe check:

 - If they're planning on creating software, require that they have the software already 5% done, preferably with a working proof-of-concept that you can play around with. Check that they haven't just filled a github repo with copy-pasted garbage code from elsewhere which doesn't actually do anything relevant.
 - If they're planning on operating a real-world business (solar, mining, etc.), check that they have a registered business somewhere. Do a background check on all involved individuals. Require that they have some of the necessary assets (property, etc.) already purchased, and verify this using public records, etc.
 - Check that there are no reasonable open scam accusations against anyone involved.
 - If smart contracts are used, verify that the English terms match the smart contract terms. If there's any way for the smart contract terms to be changed, make sure that this is specified in the English terms.
 - After reading all of their public info, ensure that there is no deception or any glaring holes.
 - Check their website for copy-pasted text, photoshopped images, and fake people.

If they fail your criteria, then you should not certify them. That's important. If you just give a certification to everyone who pays you, you're useless. You should keep the application fee even if they fail, though in some cases you could allow them to reapply for certification after failing with a reduced fee. Your goal should be to eventually be able to publish a statistic like, "99% of ICOs I certified did not turn out to be scams." You should not attempt to certify that ICOs will actually appreciate in value or anything -- that'd be far too difficult --, but just that the collected money will be used as advertised.

Once I notice that a good, trustworthy certification service like this exists, I will require that ICOs wanting to advertise on the forum receive such a certification. (If/when there are multiple good certification services, I will publish a list of ones I consider acceptable.) So you'll get a built-in market from this, and even if an ICO has no interest in advertising on the forum, acquiring a widely-trusted certification has significant value in itself.

[Requim]

There are so many shit coins and new ICO's that pop up everyday, it is becoming difficult to distinguish fraudulent projects from the serious ones. A lot of reasonable suspicions(scam alert) post/threads get buried as soon as they get posted.
I think it would be great if there exist a subforum under Alternate cryptocurrencies, where the community(or the eager detectives) can provide concrete proofs against suspicious projects ,and then mods/admins can decide if they are to be put on the blacklist/alert-list.
This way the accused have a chance to clear the allegations, and the accuser(s) can also provide further proof without smearing the whole forum.

I think this approach will benefit the bitcointalk community.

• Real, aspiring and serious projects get more exposures.
• This community achieve an overall better reputation and trustworthiness.
• Less scammers.

Whats your thoughts? Take a vote!

It's true that there's a lot of shitty ICO's who are just wasting the time of those who join their signature campaign and especially those who invest in their ICO. I really think that those who were involved in such ICO should be permanently banned in the forum so they wouldn't scam again.

[Lauda]

This may be relevant that theymos posted a while back (not sure how it progressed):

I'm getting a bunch of ICOs wanting to advertise on the forum, but I don't have time to do more than a very cursory review of each. Somebody trustworthy needs to set up a certification service that will work like this:

An ICO will pay you to apply for a certification. You will then spend many hours thoroughly reviewing everything about them in order to determine that they're at least basically sane. Some things that you should maybe check:

 - If they're planning on creating software, require that they have the software already 5% done, preferably with a working proof-of-concept that you can play around with. Check that they haven't just filled a github repo with copy-pasted garbage code from elsewhere which doesn't actually do anything relevant.
 - If they're planning on operating a real-world business (solar, mining, etc.), check that they have a registered business somewhere. Do a background check on all involved individuals. Require that they have some of the necessary assets (property, etc.) already purchased, and verify this using public records, etc.
 - Check that there are no reasonable open scam accusations against anyone involved.
 - If smart contracts are used, verify that the English terms match the smart contract terms. If there's any way for the smart contract terms to be changed, make sure that this is specified in the English terms.
 - After reading all of their public info, ensure that there is no deception or any glaring holes.
 - Check their website for copy-pasted text, photoshopped images, and fake people.

If they fail your criteria, then you should not certify them. That's important. If you just give a certification to everyone who pays you, you're useless. You should keep the application fee even if they fail, though in some cases you could allow them to reapply for certification after failing with a reduced fee. Your goal should be to eventually be able to publish a statistic like, "99% of ICOs I certified did not turn out to be scams." You should not attempt to certify that ICOs will actually appreciate in value or anything -- that'd be far too difficult --, but just that the collected money will be used as advertised.

Once I notice that a good, trustworthy certification service like this exists, I will require that ICOs wanting to advertise on the forum receive such a certification. (If/when there are multiple good certification services, I will publish a list of ones I consider acceptable.) So you'll get a built-in market from this, and even if an ICO has no interest in advertising on the forum, acquiring a widely-trusted certification has significant value in itself.

That's a rather interesting statement. I'd pick up something like that given more thought and time. However, the classic chicken problem will occur there:

1) ICOs will not spend any fee to get certified by me or someone else until there is a need for that. Why would they do that at first as that gives them nothing in return?
2) Theymos won't require certification until someone establishes themselves as a proper entity that certifies ICOs.