ICO certification service needed

[theymos]

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.

[CUNÉGONDE]

wow, if it is put into practice, I believe that many ICO projects will be sinked.

but there is another problem - audit man review project, but who review the audit man? how to avoid the audit collusion ICO team?

[desticy]

how to be a certification staff? any application and qualification needed?

[LakeBTC]

we are very interested.  and LakeBanker project website is https://lakebanker.com/  how do we proceed?

[Last of the V8s]

we are very interested.  ... how do we proceed?

pivot to not being an incestuous sleazy fuckhead

[NewWorldCoiner]

I out scammers all the time on here for free, but hey, if someone wants to pay me to do it full time, no problem.

[ethtraderdude]

- Check their website for copy-pasted text, photoshopped images, and fake people.

how does one go about verifying fake people? in most cases founders don't seem to be high profile or well known

[Redaxo]

We need an ICO for this!

 

[hilariousetc]

Can we extend this to any ICOs wanting to Announce their projects here? Otherwise all this is going to do is take away even more money from the forum and encourage them to run even bigger spamfests of signature campaigns that they won't do anything about.

wow, if it is put into practice, I believe that many ICO projects will be sinked.

It won't unless the same practice applies to announcing them at all here. This just seems to be for advertising slots and most of them are too cheap to advertise via them anyway.

[theymos]

Some people seem to have misunderstood: I'm not trying to recruit people here for something that I would manage; I want you to set this up, on your own and independently. Then if you do a good job, I would require that advertisers receive your certification (or a similar one).

how does one go about verifying fake people? in most cases founders don't seem to be high profile or well known

Usually these team pages say stuff like "XYZ team member has worked in the field for 100 years, and is recognized across the universe as the #1 expert." They should prove those qualifications to the certifier.

Most people leave traces that you can find. If there are one or two who can't be linked to anything, then that's probably fine. Also, it's fine if the people are pseudonymous but have a good pseudonymous history (eg. they've written a lot of code, etc.). But if the whole team is full of ghosts with no verifiable achievements, then that's awfully suspicious.

Can we extend this to any ICOs wanting to Announce their projects here?

That'd probably be too restrictive.

[LeGaulois]

And how are you going to choose someone? Corruption always works, especially with money offered. I am afraid after some time the guy can start to look around a way to accept money without you see/check something is not clean in the project.
Don't you have someone in your team able to do this?

[petrov752]

Very interesting proposal, but the qualitative test requires a lengthy due diligence. You  talk about management due diligence. It is necessary to Supplement the audit code, audit of financial models, escrow etc. I suggest doing it immediately at a good level. But this check takes time, and therefore money. It is necessary to understand the approximate cost of certification.

Further, can such a work order:

1) we propose a methodology
2) you confirm it
3) we start to work on the methodology
4) we make a certificate and add it to the blockchain. (or its hash as done in SilentNotary)
5) anyone can check.

Methodology public - The result of the public - there is no place of corruption.

[CIF]

This doesn't have to be an individual effort. It can be a verified team with checks and balances.

[petrov752]

This doesn't have to be an individual effort. It can be a verified team with checks and balances.

My experience working with Moody's and Fitch Ratings shows that each counterparty meets one analyst. But, on the project work team.

[JayJuanGee]

Some people seem to have misunderstood: I'm not trying to recruit people here for something that I would manage; I want you to set this up, on your own and independently. Then if you do a good job, I would require that advertisers receive your certification (or a similar one).

how does one go about verifying fake people? in most cases founders don't seem to be high profile or well known

Usually these team pages say stuff like "XYZ team member has worked in the field for 100 years, and is recognized across the universe as the #1 expert." They should prove those qualifications to the certifier.

Most people leave traces that you can find. If there are one or two who can't be linked to anything, then that's probably fine. Also, it's fine if the people are pseudonymous but have a good pseudonymous history (eg. they've written a lot of code, etc.). But if the whole team is full of ghosts with no verifiable achievements, then that's awfully suspicious.

Can we extend this to any ICOs wanting to Announce their projects here?

That'd probably be too restrictive.

Sounds like a really great business idea for someone who has the necessary skills and time and is also able to assemble a team.  Sure, at first the fee would likely be lower, but as the person or team builds a certification reputation, he/they can increase fees  - I would imagine fees of $3k to $10k would not be unreasonable in the earlier stages of this process.  Would probably take hundreds of hours of work and looking into, and of course the more experienced and the better auditing systems and skills are developed, the quicker and more reliable the  accreditation would become.

[CIF]

Some people seem to have misunderstood: I'm not trying to recruit people here for something that I would manage; I want you to set this up, on your own and independently. Then if you do a good job, I would require that advertisers receive your certification (or a similar one).

how does one go about verifying fake people? in most cases founders don't seem to be high profile or well known

Usually these team pages say stuff like "XYZ team member has worked in the field for 100 years, and is recognized across the universe as the #1 expert." They should prove those qualifications to the certifier.

Most people leave traces that you can find. If there are one or two who can't be linked to anything, then that's probably fine. Also, it's fine if the people are pseudonymous but have a good pseudonymous history (eg. they've written a lot of code, etc.). But if the whole team is full of ghosts with no verifiable achievements, then that's awfully suspicious.

Can we extend this to any ICOs wanting to Announce their projects here?

That'd probably be too restrictive.

Sounds like a really great business idea for someone who has the necessary skills and time and is also able to assemble a team.  Sure, at first the fee would likely be lower, but as the person or team builds a certification reputation, he/they can increase fees  - I would imagine fees of $3k to $10k would not be unreasonable in the earlier stages of this process.  Would probably take hundreds of hours of work and looking into, and of course the more experienced and the better auditing systems and skills are developed, the quicker and more reliable the  accreditation would become.

If this is going to happen, and it sounds like for the betterment of the community.. although it is known how important Bitcointalk is for ICO's you have to make sure there is measurable reward for advertising on this site. ICO's will just allocate marketing budgets to other avenues if you don't put a case together.

[petrov752]

Colleagues it would be a interesting project for me!

I have some experience in a related field. I worked as credit analyst and risk manager in banks, and also engaged in the organization of financing (CLN,Eurobonds, Syndicate loan).
If theymos will give me 1-2 days, I will prepare a draft methodology for certification of ICO and will post it here for discussion.

[Hui8]

It is very good idea @theymos. I think there should be implementation of software for uploading of docs and real proofs. Could you please give the idea whether there is need of such things? Like solid proofs of ICO founder or entity. Where we can find more idea about this or rules for instance. This will expand our imagination limit and we can try to implement more new ideas.

[hilariousetc]

Can we extend this to any ICOs wanting to Announce their projects here?

That'd probably be too restrictive.

This forum needs some restrictions. It's because there are no rules that anyone can just create a crapcoin and get away with spamming the forum with hundreds of accounts and with absolutely no consequences to them all whilst they take in millions in the process. All this is going to do is make sure the very few people who actually bid on ad slots wont bother now especially when they can just get unlimited advertising for free via a signature campaign.

[JayJuanGee]

Colleagues it would be a interesting project for me!

I have some experience in a related field. I worked as credit analyst and risk manager in banks, and also engaged in the organization of financing (CLN,Eurobonds, Syndicate loan).
If theymos will give me 1-2 days, I will prepare a draft methodology for certification of ICO and will post it here for discussion.

I doubt that it is necessary to publish your methodologies, except maybe as some of your internal documents that attempt to get clients to use your services to get certified... and also maybe as a means to provide some of the information to folks that might end up working on your team - that is if you can convince half of the scammer ICOs to attempt to get certified. 

I imagine a large majority of the ICOs don't want to get certified or to pay for certification until it becomes a thing and if it seems necessary.  If they are able to raise $100s of millions in days, then why the fuck they gonna want to get certified and expose all their weaknesses, unless certification does become a thing, and in that regard, one of the most important things is that anyone planning to engage in such a certification process to be a leader, self-motivated and establishing reasonable standards, as already outlined by Theymos.. and at the same time figuring out a ways to communicate the standards without necessarily revealing some of your trade secrets...   So maybe you go out there and certify a bunch of ICOs with grades and for free or some other way to attempt to monetize.. because everyone has to get paid at some point..  - and then some of the ICOs may be able to get better grades if they cooperate with you to audit them and they check out to be A okay.. on a deeper level.. it is a good idea, but no easy task to carry out without a lot of work..