ICO certification service needed

[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.

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..

A)  There are three ways of publicity methodology

     1) methodology is public for everyone, in this case, anyone can recalculate and check the result.
     2) the methodology open for the customer in this case is the administration of the forum.
     3) Not a public methodology, in this case the certificate is accompanied by expert opinion.

     Here need to get administration opinion.

B)  1-2 days to make the methodology fail I will only describe the approaches of analysis of the possible methods and results, this information may be public in any case.

C)   At the initial moment the ICO Team are not interested in obtaining a certificate, so it can be "imposed" service. Further, in the case of a certain quality and a certain PR it can become a separate direction.
        In the case of support from the administration I am willing to actively participate (work, to set a goal, recruit a team, etc.)

D)  The price of the certificate is established in consultation with the administration.

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[giveen]

This is a good idea but there is no exact way to determine if the ico is legit. They can pass all the copy pasting tests , all the software tests, smart contract , transperant ico but still this won't certainly be enough because investors are investing in something which is irreversible and after getting certified the owner can change his mind or not deliver what they promised in that situation there's nothing we can do. Secondly they will start adding sponsored which leads to even more bullshit and finally if the guy who verifies wants to make more money he may just ask to give more funds to certify their project. The idea is good but there is a less chance to work.

[petrov752]

This is a good idea but there is no exact way to determine if the ico is legit. They can pass all the copy pasting tests , all the software tests, smart contract , transperant ico but still this won't certainly be enough because investors are investing in something which is irreversible and after getting certified the owner can change his mind or not deliver what they promised in that situation there's nothing we can do. Secondly they will start adding sponsored which leads to even more bullshit and finally if the guy who verifies wants to make more money he may just ask to give more funds to certify their project. The idea is good but there is a less chance to work.

The certificate cannot give guarantees that the money will be returned to investors. He confirms that the ICO has been tested by this technique. If we understand that the procedure works poorly, we change it. As concerns the second question there are two answers, the reputation or publicity. In classical economics, the rating agencies work on the basis of reputation. Here are the options with the publicity.

[CIF]

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..

You're basically trying to become the SEC by doing this its a very time consuming/sensitive plan. I just can't imagine this working out well if it's not run by a larger organization. Like Jay said - you need to get more than one forum on board to enforce this.

[hilariousetc]

This is a good idea but there is no exact way to determine if the ico is legit. They can pass all the copy pasting tests , all the software tests, smart contract , transperant ico but still this won't certainly be enough because investors are investing in something which is irreversible and after getting certified the owner can change his mind or not deliver what they promised in that situation there's nothing we can do. Secondly they will start adding sponsored which leads to even more bullshit and finally if the guy who verifies wants to make more money he may just ask to give more funds to certify their project. The idea is good but there is a less chance to work.

It's not meant to be an absolute guarantee that an ICO is legit, but more just of a vetting process to minimise risk. You could have all the qualifications to look after kids and pass all the background checks, but still doesn't mean to say they still wont abuse them. This is no different. It will at least weed out a lot of lazy ICOs who can't even be bothered putting in the minimum amount of work.

[petrov752]

I made a chart of the estimated risks. Please add to view, give comments.
Under certification it seems to me should fall the branches the risk of crowdfunding and the status of the project.

[Dullmartini]

I made a chart of the estimated risks. Please add to view, give comments.
Under certification it seems to me should fall the branches the risk of crowdfunding and the status of the project.

That is a really good chart!

From the top of my head; in financial risk,  the risk they run out of money before project can be operationalized. What does the ico intend to do with funds? Do they already have financing from elsewhere?

Also in legal risk I think if they're entering a heavily regulated industry (eg those ico's trying to set up a stock exchange trading real shares with crypto) that increases the risk exponentially

[petrov752]

Also in legal risk I think if they're entering a heavily regulated industry (eg those ico's trying to set up a stock exchange trading real shares with crypto) that increases the risk exponentially

About the legal risk, I don't think we need to evaluate at an early stage. However, beyond the confirmation of existence of legal entities.

[petrov752]

The scheme of influence of various factors on the rating depending on the type of project.

[Dullmartini]

Also in legal risk I think if they're entering a heavily regulated industry (eg those ico's trying to set up a stock exchange trading real shares with crypto) that increases the risk exponentially

About the legal risk, I don't think we need to evaluate at an early stage. However, beyond the confirmation of existence of legal entities.

Interesting. I'm curious about why you wouldn't do it upfront? And if not at the beginning, then when?

[petrov752]

Interesting. I'm curious about why you wouldn't do it upfront? And if not at the beginning, then when?

Because until there is a sufficiently large number of judicial precedents in important jurisdictions, the large legal companies are not willing to look at ICO. So for the time being, you can check the availability of legal entities in the registers, the founders, etc.

[giveen]

This is a good idea but there is no exact way to determine if the ico is legit. They can pass all the copy pasting tests , all the software tests, smart contract , transperant ico but still this won't certainly be enough because investors are investing in something which is irreversible and after getting certified the owner can change his mind or not deliver what they promised in that situation there's nothing we can do. Secondly they will start adding sponsored which leads to even more bullshit and finally if the guy who verifies wants to make more money he may just ask to give more funds to certify their project. The idea is good but there is a less chance to work.

It's not meant to be an absolute guarantee that an ICO is legit, but more just of a vetting process to minimise risk. You could have all the qualifications to look after kids and pass all the background checks, but still doesn't mean to say they still wont abuse them. This is no different. It will at least weed out a lot of lazy ICOs who can't even be bothered putting in the minimum amount of work.

See in my opinion a there are various types of ICO.
First category is serious , this means weather the ico is being raised for actually developing a software , a product or anything which requires development. Now another serious is when they actually get is listed on good exchanges. In terms of investors all we care is to sell it for at least double the amount we invested in ICO so the company makes sure it lists on different exchanges.
Another category would be advertisement. As theymos said he doesn't want scam ICO's to advertise which is right but if you notice without these huge signature campaigns and forum ads the company won't even be able to raised $1k, spending funds on advertisement would mean they actually want to raise funds maybe for personal use but in end whenever these companies raise in millions it's like a guarantee that our investment will double or even triple
The last category would be as you said the lazy ones, these are the people who purchase one forum ads and distributes coins as bounty which is the worth thing they can do. Giving their coins as bounty is for sure a huge dump and most likely they list it on yobit. This can be the only category we can say it will never certify for example ethbits or eth link who claims to raise millions but barely anything.

The scheme of influence of various factors on the rating depending on the type of project.

https://i.imgur.com/eySiFvc.png

This makes sense but verifying all that can take a lot of time and it can't always be the same there will be variations.

[petrov752]

giveen

Above, I described the types of ICO for the evaluation it was possible to give different weight to different factors and to check that either with less or more attention.
For example, in ICO there is a strong team, is it important? If so, the ICO refers to the type of services for the classic economy it is not essential (there may be a very simple smart contracts) If we are talking about the ICO for product development in the field of blockchain technology is critical.

You do not write about the types ICO. And about the ranking as I understand it. And indicate You offer the following scale:

[Quickseller]

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."

The word "scam" is very subjective, especially in the ICO/securities space.

A lot of companies end up failing for one reason or another. Also many Bitcoin-related (crypto-related) businesses are run 'honestly' for a person, and their owners eventually scam.

It is my personal belief that ICOs are probably not worth their hassle to allow them to advertise here. There is too much regulatory/legal risks for them to be worth what amount of advertising revenue they bring in. Even is no regulatory sanctions are levied against you, various US regulators can cause headaches.

[|Bitkoin|]

I agree with this wholeheartedly. IT is like companies which now offer verification, like Facebook verify store pages/businesses and twitter verifies profile... and Airbnb verifies photos... so a company should verify ICO legitimacy.

[bitjoin]

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.

If you are providing some kind of structure to how you make your judgements with some kind of track record then you could provide that service for the forum.  That is what OP is asking for.

[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.

If you are providing some kind of structure to how you make your judgements with some kind of track record then you could provide that service for the forum.  That is what OP is asking for.

I know what the OP is asking for, and the reason why. All these scam ICO's will soon become detrimental to the forum that he owns, and possibly cause him some unwanted attention from the authorities.

I have no experience setting up a website or platform to provide this service, but I can spot scams a mile away. I also know how to find all the necessary information in order to expose them. Some of the ones you find on here are a joke, so I have fun with them, like 419 baiting. Some are more elaborate, like Monkey Capital for example. When people started revealing on their thread some of the information I already had, like Mr Harrison's property scam, the involvement of people already linked to scams, fake twitter followers, etc, I decided not to post the wealth of damning information I have on Mr Harrison. There seemed to be no need. I believed that nobody in their right mind would invest after reading these facts. But I was clearly wrong. Even when Mr Harrison started threatening violence against people who were exposing him, some people still chose to invest. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Especially when sock puppets start claiming the water is actually poison placed there by a troll.

Mr Harrison has a long history of lies and self promotion in order to perpetuate his scams. He created a backstory for himself by "researching" his own family background, apparently in order to impress his girlfriend, something I find highly dubious given the illustrious history of the Harrison printing company. http://www.jnbarcock.co.uk/Autobiography%20Documents.html

More red flags were raised by his wikipedia pages being deleted for unverifiable claims, inaccuracies, and conflict of interest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2016_November_17#Daniel_Mark_Harrison
Using the link above as a starting point, you can find many issues giving cause for concern.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Dmhco
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Ben_Harrison_(Music_Producer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard/Archive_91#Daniel_Mark_Harrison

Mr Harrison is also an expert in starting numerous companies all of which fizzle out after a year, meaning he never has to file any accounts.
http://www.hongkongcompany.net/Dmhco-Hong-Kong-Limited-ohkccibhk/#.WaM5RyiGM2w
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10152499
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08766275
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08548227
https://www.companieslist.co.uk/prev/08548227-thonglor-global-ventures-limited
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08382933

Thonglor is very interesting. Their website is no longer accessible, but the wayback machine has some info for us.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130516232953/http://thonglor.co.th/

Does anyone here believe that they funded three hydro power stations, or that they ever had the money to do so? I certainly don't, especially as I can't find any information on the project or the company which they claim to have signed MOU's with.

This is just part of the information I had on July 11th when I queried the due diligence performed by Coinschedule.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2003741.msg20073900#msg20073900

So in short, I know how to do this, and I also have the motivation to do it. I detest scammers, and as many of them as possible need to be eradicated from this space. But my time is my own, and until I'm offered financial reward for doing this, there will obviously be limitations in the amount of time and effort I dedicate to uncovering scams for purely altruistic reasons. I thought I may have been contacted by whoever is setting up this service, but alas, my inbox is bare. Feel free to trawl my post history to see what else I have exposed.

P.S. I am as far as I'm aware the only person to have uncovered the new identity used by the URO coin scammer Nilesh Nair. It wasn't hard to find, but I'm keeping it to myself for now. Softly softly catch ye monkey.  

[Bunsomjelican]

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.

This is a great and good topic discussion regarding about establishing the ICO's in the forum, according to your statement these are the rules and qualification regarding about in giving certification in one ICO project in this industry. For so many ICO's that has been rise up here where most of them are just crappy coins or shitcoins many became a victim by them. Why not try to give some other restriction in putting an ICO project in the forum, at least anyhow every ICo token will be determine as one of the good ICO project because it has a certifcation, which means they've pass all they need to comply in this industry.

[thehun]

I believe the assessments our company makes as a requirement for prospective customers fit quite well in the definition of what you're looking for.

I have sent you a PM with more information 

[Lauda]

I believe the assessments our company makes as a requirement for prospective customers fit quite well in the definition of what you're looking for.

Is this some kind of bad joke?

Our partnership with Bancor means we work exclusively on projects utilising Bancor smart tokens - and our expertise with the Bancor platform positions us perfectly to guide those projects through the crowdfund process.

You let that scam happen.