RESEARCH ON MOVE OF LOCKED COINS IN DEC, 2017-JAN,2018Edited in 2020 after barrysty1e's protection was reviewed by ChekaZ
1. Addresses with coins that were blocked (their outputs) with the protection (in 0.10.5 release by barrysty1e)
2cLG2RzF6rDCtNws6We8o8avXs1grqARHU
2FgWY2MjPn9AG3bhuRLH5mhCKyc17eVHRYCoin lock was done to prevent unauthorised move of coins, spending them on exchanges, it was reported in the 3rd report of Court Receiver, Oct, 2016, that there were attempts to spend coins, and that only 8.4 bil were sent to Receiver since 2015. That did not affect exchanges, coins were locked on their addresses. Only coins which were not sent to Receiver were locked. If addresses owner wanted to give coins to Court Receiver, it still could be done whether by sending private keys to Receiver, or by sending a physical wallet with a password to Receiver. The Court then could contact the community to unlock them.
Coins were locked in Dec, 2016 (according to a dev barrysty1e), after exchanges updated the wallet, though the planned fork happened only on March, 23, 2017.
the coin locking has existed since december 2016
2. Block explorers show the first small move of 'locked' coins happened on
March, 3, 2017.
You can use Mooncoin block explorers to track these addresses:
2cLG2RzF6rDCtNws6We8o8avXs1grqARHU
2FgWY2MjPn9AG3bhuRLH5mhCKyc17eVHRY
3. When Vassilis Kritharakis from Greece became a new transparent Mooncoin dev and took over the codebase in early December, 2017, later, about Christmas or New Year he started to publish his Mooncoin address (for donations) in his signature at Bitcointalk (he deleted his signature after the event with coins, however he doesn't deny the fact of receiving of 62B to his signature address, see the point 9 of this research).
Hi,
my name is Vassilis Kritharakis and I'm the official Developer of Mooncoin cryptocurrency.
4. On December, 12, 2017 Vassilis published the new release of Mooncoin wallet:
5. The release of wallet (0.13) published on
Dec, 12, 2017 was based on barrysty1e's 0.13 with some changes (part of code activating Balloonhash after the block 1,250,000 was inactivated and other small changes).
Major issues with stuck txs were fixed by Vassilis anyways only after Dec, 15, 2017:
I just fixed today the pool mining section and the transaction issues..
we passed "key" block #1180751 with 73(?!?!?!!??!) transactions! Few more tests and tomorrow i will inform all the pools to make an update!
I must thank public @mebagger, @coinflow, @GBLASS and @Laidback!
you guys spent your time with me and your resources!
Thank you for your contribution to the Mooncoin community!
6. On
Dec, 14, 2017 1GMT coins again (the next time after March, 3, 2017) were moved from 'locked' addresses:
2cLG2RzF6rDCtNws6We8o8avXs1grqARHU
2FgWY2MjPn9AG3bhuRLH5mhCKyc17eVHRY
Obviously in just one day and a half it was not possible to update the wallet by all pools and exchanges. The majority of nodes still used the wallet 0.10.5 barrysty1e on Dec, 14, 2017, anyway even if they used a new 0.13 Vassilis wallet, released on Dec, 12, the code with barrysty1e's protection was just the same. Also remember that some coins were moved on March, 3, 2017.
7. That meant only (with all respect to barrysty1e) that his protection did not work great.
He did what he could, but DECENTRALISED OPEN SOURCE NATURE of Mooncoin made the hack of his protection possible.
It looks like they started their own pool, compiled their own wallets with inactivated protection in it and moved coins from locked addresses, however, without knowing of private keys this operation was not possible.
8. Now we understand that Barrysty1e's protection used mempool of wallet, and was not present in consensus rules. That means that no matter before the fork block in March, 2017 or after it, coins could be moved in the same way, by compiling a wallet without protection and mining MOON with it, to include the transaction into a normal block.
9. On
Jan, 5, 2018 62B coins were moved from 'locked' addresses to an address of Vassilis Kritharakis from Greece, a new transparent dev of Mooncoin.
My address is published by me on bitcointalk and on discord, as donation address, i think ~3 days ago.. so, if i was a thief this will be very stupid from my side!
...............
Now those 62billions are on my account!(i think the amount and i think i will fade out!)
10. Some coins from 'locked' addresses were sold on exchanges in the middle of Dec, 2017 though (according to Vassilis who contacted exchanges to block these coins in Dec, 2017).
11.
And that's the main question: why some coins were sold at exchanges in the middle of Dec, 2017, when the Mooncoin price was quite low, below 1 Sat, and when the price was high, on Jan, 5, 2018 no coins were sold and just sent to an address of Mooncoin dev, Vassilis.
You can see that 62 B still stay on Vassilis' address: 2QovBjnVke4fgn9UXdz9osheNLxQCk3d8R.
12. The answer to this question disclosures the whole picture about these strange events.
Let's think logically.
Someone didn't know where to return coins. When barrysty1e (James) was a dev, another user CryptoDatabase started scam accusations threads against barrysty1e (they both didn't like each other, and each of them believed he was right). Probably due to this negative trust rating the person didn't trust barrysty1e.
When Vassilis became a transparent dev in Dec, 2017 and published his Mooncoin address in his signature at Bitcointalk, someone decided to send coins to his address, hoping that Vassilis as a transparent and responsible dev will return coins to their rightful owners. The mistake of the unknown person was that this person didn't contact the community before this step.
13. That explains everything, except one thing to explain: why only 62 B. The answer could be simple: it was mentioned that coins of customers were kept together with coins, belonged to an exchange owner, not on separate balances. But it was not possible to 'lock' some billions without 'locking' the rest of coins on these addresses and it was not possible to know an exact number of coins to lock - in 2016. Likely only these 62 B from locked coins belonged to exchange customers - that's the answer to the question of point 11.
14. That's the result of research about these strange events. Only these 62B (that were returned to a Mooncoin dev, Vassilis Kritharakis and stay on
2QovBjnVke4fgn9UXdz9osheNLxQCk3d8R) is a subject for decisions. All other coins from locked addresses (including those spent on exchanges) are not relevant and shouldn't be locked in any way.
15. There is some exception though:
1) 2DMfpxPiMtpVDVyrxQAAmfBbZnDH4XCMfK
2) 2JA3Cqf9on8YuxngxdXStCFKanAGnaQU5A
These 2 addresses still contain locked coins, but these addresses are not under control of any exchange admin, these addresses contain other locked coins,
not related to 62B. It's absolutely another story from 2014 (Dec, 2014 thefts).
16. When Vassilis received coins, there was a big discussion what to do with them. Majority of members wanted to burn them. There was an announcement, asking people to claim if these coins belonged to anyone, and transparent discussing in the ANN thread which is not moderated by me, which means that I cannot edit or delete posts of other users, also people discussed it at other channels.
There was an opinion, that only lawyers could answer whether it's legal to make a coin burn, taking into account that there was no 100% proof where these coins derived from, and should these coins be sent to the Court Receiver in anothet jurisdiction with Vassilis or to Greek authorities, and, if yes, in which way technically.
Finally the community just had to wait for what lawyers would recommend to Vassilis, and what would be his actions after that. As we are not legal experts, it was a better choice, than forcing Vassilis to do anything with these coins.
You can verify the results of this research by googling, studying the history of Bitcointalk ANN threads, old and new Mooncoin Githubs
https://github.com/mooncoindev and
https://github.com/mooncoincore,
and if you have no time for doing that, the majority of this info can be verified fast with Mooncoin block explorers:
https://prohashing.com/explorer/Mooncoinhttps://chainz.cryptoid.info/moonAnd again: all these events happened only because people kept coins at exchange.
Never keep your coins at exchanges, not only for you, events show that it could be a risk for the whole community if you keep your coins at exchanges.
