Introduction
On September 29th, 2017, ABDK Consulting was contacted by the eSports.com development team and was asked to audit a set of smart contracts for the eSports ICO. Given the amount of code for review, ABDK has asked $12000 for the audit, of which 40% must be an advance payment. An agreement was signed by Pietro Seminara, the alleged director of eSports.com LTD with the help of Natalia Stoyanova-Perron. The agreement stipulated that eSports.com has 5 days to file complaints.
Audit
ABDK Consulting has finished the report on October 26th. Among others, a critical flaw was found: the smart contract has some tokens frozen till certain time, but later anyone, not only the legitimate owner could withdraw them. The developers, having seen the report, fixed the mistake saving potentially millions of dollars in tokens for eSports. On October 30th, ABDK has reviewed the corrections to the code made by the developers.
Payment
The payment has never happened, even the advance one. The invoice was sent on November 9th. On November 10th Natalia promised to return to me on Monday [13th]. On 13th she commanded us to contact their CEO Philipp Geppert. When we provided our phone number, on 16th she said “he will call you tomorrow”. On November 18th Philipp promised to contact on Monday-Tuesday [20th-21th]. He did not call. After a reminder on 23th Philipp sent a cryptic message about token naming and mentions that he is very busy. On November 25th he finally called and said he did not see the agreement. He could not provide details on what the problems are. On November 27th we got a message he is on flight to Singapore.
Dmitry Khovratovich,
CEO of ABDK Consulting
ABDK got the assignment from us to audit the smart contract. In all fairness, they found errors which could be fixed.
However ABDK also failed to recognize that the name of the token in the smart contract was wrong, among other errors, which caused havoc at the start of our ICO. I asked multiple times for clarification and got the answer, that this was not part of their assignment. Now when you get a smart contract audited for 12.000 Euro, then you must assume that the basic common human sense things are included here.
Furthermore we explained ABDK, that we are in the middle of an ICO and building a product, therefore we will need some time to assess the situation. ABDK started to threaten with making this public and we agreed that they might do so, if they wish, but we would answer to it as I am doing it now.
Payment timeframes of 30-60 days are not unusual in business at all, especially when what has been delivered is up to discussion after crucial errors.
We never denied to pay ABDK, but we denied to let them pressure us and extort us into paying by giving bad press to our project. After an assessment phase, we will pay ABDK based on what they delivered, but no more. Also we will forward this subject to our lawyers now.
My recommendation if you do an ICO is, do not take Auditor's which don't even check your website or the name of your token and tell you afterwards, that its not part of the agreement...
For any further questions, please feel free to PM me.
