ICO unethical behaviours - abusing your bounty hunters - name & shame

[paxmao]

This thread is about unethical behaviors of ICOs and/or ITOs teams and/or campaign managers abusing their bounty hunters or their investors, not about exit scams or bad business ideas. I am placing this on serious discussion because I would not like to have too much off-topic and I think is not really a reputation / accusation in terms of the forum.

I take part in serious posts as well as doing bounty, translations and promotions. After a while, I am tired of being treated like a stupid by some campaign managers, ICO teams and promoters alike. I am not even talking about exit scams or bad business ideas, but about breaking the word given or setting new conditions or lowering the payments after the work has been completed.

As far as I am concerned, such changes are unethical and we as a community should make sure that any project that falls into these practices is named and shamed on the forum so future ICO launchers know that if they misbehave it will affect the long term reputation of the project (and thus the value of the tokens that the team has as a reward).

See example below, I will add some in the future.

WAX TOKEN SALE

The WAX token sale asked for KYC after the sale, and the tokens were not locked so being first to market was about hurrying your application through an smartphone app that did not work and with a technical support that could not provide an answer in less than 3 days. Proof can be found in their telegram group, dates after the sale.

Feel free to add your own. If accusation requires proof, please include it.

NUCLEUS
LIVE stars
Modul Trade
KahnChat
These apparently, asked for KYC for bounty hunters AFTER the job was done. ModulTrade scammed some of it's hunters.
Datawallet
 If you didn't complete the KYC, you could get half the tokens you earned in ETH.  Huh
Gladius


ENVION
Taking ages to give the tokens to supporters. Investigating suspicious accounts after the promotion has ended.

CIBUS
Complex KYC and asks for a FEE before sending the tokens.

STORIQA.
quoting "saw them on ICOBENCH, showed up under the filter "no KYC & no whitelist", so i participated.
few weeks before ICO finished, they said "we're gonna do KYC because we want to make sure there are no criminals involved in our token sale" but they already distribute their tokens to pre-sale buyers, no KYC required lol."

CLEAR COIN.
quoting "at first, they asked participants to fill up 10 info (including reddit, medium, and linkedin, yes, freakin linkedin. what is this, job application?), then they cut it to only 5 info out of 10 required (no talk about KYC at that time). in the middle of the road, they said KYC is required for investors who invest big (don't remember the exact number), and i take it as for ICO participants only, not for airdrop. Now they say everyone must fill KYC in order to get their token. there's no way i'll give my ID to strangers for couple of bucks, heck no. and please guys, think twice about KYC, why do you want to do it for only couple of bucks"

Problems with payments
Debitum Network Bounty Program
CryptoFlix Bounty Program
Bowheadhealth Bounty Program

Editing to add new cases...

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[sud]

WAX TOKEN SALE

The WAX token sale asked for KYC after the sale, and the tokens were not locked so being first to market was about hurrying your application through an smartphone app that did not work and with a technical support that could not provide an answer in less than 3 days. Proof can be found in their telegram group, dates after the sale.

Feel free to add your own. If accusation requires proof, please include it.

My friend told me that Nucleus also requires KYC from bounty participants in order to get their tokens. This is ridiculous, since hunters did not take part in tokensale, and did not invest money. And what if someone won't pass KYC process, or just don't want to? Such practices smells scammy.

[mozilafirefox]

Asking for KYC after the bounty campaign is finished is a such a cheap tactic followed by some ICO's these days.
They dont even mention anything regarding KYC requirements for bounty participants during the start because they know it'll decrease bounty participants,
But they ask it after all the work is done by bounty participants. This is so not fair!

Nucleus Vision is one such ICO. Shame!
https://nucleus.vision
They even banned me from telegram group for Questioning them.

[cryptocommoner]

Asking for KYC after the bounty campaign is finished is a such a cheap tactic followed by some ICO's these days.
They dont even mention anything regarding KYC requirements for bounty participants during the start because they know it'll decrease bounty participants,
But they ask it after all the work is done by bounty participants. This is so not fair!

Nucleus Vision is one such ICO. Shame!
https://nucleus.vision
They even banned me from telegram group for Questioning them.

LIVE stars just did this as well.  I wonder if it is going to become the norm to future-proof for potential upcoming regulations?

[paxmao]

Most ICO are scam or asshole anyway. They would give you free token and they claim the token value you get is high, but you're required to give personal information or do tasks which could give away your personal information. I can't trust them to keep the user's personal information safe.
I think something like this should be treated as scam or scam-exit attempt or at least listed as unproffesional action.

... and that is the point of this thread exactly.

[aervin11]

I want to mention Envion for not updating the spreadsheet and also not distributing the rewards. The ICO was over since January 14 gathering 100Million USD. You can check this https://icobench.com/ico/envion

And says "Envion will distribute awards among those who contribute to the bounty program goals after envion conducts a thorough review to assess quality and prevent abuse. This will occur no less than 2 weeks after the ICO ends"
Here's the link

Envion will distribute awards among those who contribute to the bounty program goals after envion conducts a thorough review to assess quality and prevent abuse. This will occur no less than 2 weeks after the ICO ends.

After gathering millions, they can't even check those who pursue to advertise their project. The'y're busy with the new found wealth anyways.

[paxmao]

Most ICO are scam or asshole anyway. They would give you free token and they claim the token value you get is high, but you're required to give personal information or do tasks which could give away your personal information. I can't trust them to keep the user's personal information safe.
I think something like this should be treated as scam or scam-exit attempt or at least listed as unproffesional action.

Not at all, many ICO are very honest and legit and one out of four or so does give excellent profits for the supporters. The problem is that too many people say that "all are scams" and that is a problem for the whole sector.

[CryptoLex]

I think alot of ICO's find out, that during the sale period, the average bountyhunter is a complete waist of time. If you click any link to FB or Twitter from a bountyhunter report, you will see those accounts are flooded with all sorts of retweets or posts. This kind of exposure isent helping any project and only costs tokens.

The average bountyhunter doesnt give a shit about the projects, all they want is as much tokens for their jobs to dump asap when it gets listed.

Thats why I think not many upcoming ICO's will keep offering bounty programs

[sud]

I think alot of ICO's find out, that during the sale period, the average bountyhunter is a complete waist of time. If you click any link to FB or Twitter from a bountyhunter report, you will see those accounts are flooded with all sorts of retweets or posts. This kind of exposure isent helping any project and only costs tokens.

The average bountyhunter doesnt give a shit about the projects, all they want is as much tokens for their jobs to dump asap when it gets listed.

Thats why I think not many upcoming ICO's will keep offering bounty programs

That is true, unfortunately most bounties are flooded with spam accounts that brings no value to the project. But if bounty manager set strict rules and review all participants you can have nice viral marketing. Quality over quantity!

[cryptothief]

I am not necessarily against KYC for bounty hunters, as I think it weeds out duplicate accounts, even though it could be seen as overly authoritarian. But I do agree that it should be made clear at least a reasonable amount of time before the bounty ends to give participants the opportunity to pull out. Plenty of projects change rules during the process to adapt to updates and feedback. Although it is not ideal, I understand the need for it to maximise the return for the project on the bounty, just as long as they are communicative and supportive to their bounty hunters. Ideally a decent project will have laid out all rules and regulations at the start, with contingency plans in place, but I guess some get caught out either by lack of investment/interest or changing regulations in their host country.

[CryptoBry]

I have no problem with the KYC process if that is what it takes to get my bounty rewards as I also understand maybe the project is just being careful not to go against any regulations that affect the whole project. What I could not understand is that some projects don't really care about those who did promotional work after they got the money from the ICO buyers. There are also those who are changing the formula of computation after the ICO was done. Yes, many of the bounty participants are there just to get the tokens and this is quite understandable. An ICO project that is not convinced that bounty can be helping should not offer one to forum members, simple as that.

[Jet Cash]

What is the current situation with WAX. It seemed to have some potential for use in the sale of domain names, and I was going to look into it for this.
I thought that OPskins was quite large and established, and I would have expected them to create a decent crypto.

[paxmao]

What is the current situation with WAX. It seemed to have some potential for use in the sale of domain names, and I was going to look into it for this.
I thought that OPskins was quite large and established, and I would have expected them to create a decent crypto.

They did not treat their investors too well, but in terms of the project,  shortly after the ICO they decided to create their own chain, which should be delivered sometime in Q2 2018 if I recall correctly. Now, the token itself has suffered a fall as most projects anyway.

As far as the business is concerned, it seems to be working normally, creating new partnerships and the like. The first interesting news is that you can trade cryptokitties on it. I can´t assess it´s current ability to deal with domain names.

[Jet Cash]

My inital attraction to Wax came from my reading of an introductory paper. They stated that it was possible to store records of virtual assets on their blockchain. This related to gaming awards such as armour and weapons, but I wondered if it could be used to record domain name ownership to assist in sales and transfers. I don't understand the concept of CryptoKitties, and I will confess that the name put me off a bit.

[sud]

Thing is when project moves on with development and hit exchanges, nobody remembers shady or unethical things that happened before tokensale or in the bounty campaign. People only care about coin value and upcoming events.

My inital attraction to Wax came from my reading of an introductory paper. They stated that it was possible to store records of virtual assets on their blockchain. This related to gaming awards such as armour and weapons, but I wondered if it could be used to record domain name ownership to assist in sales and transfers. I don't understand the concept of CryptoKitties, and I will confess that the name put me off a bit.

Lol, so you haven't heard about CryptoTitties yet... 

[Jet Cash]

Lol, so you haven't heard about CryptoTitties yet... 

Nope - are they in the Las Vegas strippers thread?

[FreshMoff]

I realise this is a name-and-shame thread focused on those doing it wrong... but can we have some examples of one that did it right, all the way through ?

(this won't hype any existing programs - since necessarily they will be over now in order for someone to have assessed them as doing them right to the end)

[paxmao]

I realise this is a name-and-shame thread focused on those doing it wrong... but can we have some examples of one that did it right, all the way through ?

(this won't hype any existing programs - since necessarily they will be over now in order for someone to have assessed them as doing them right to the end)

Credits did pay bounties correctly, BABB and Experty too although they were low for what I heard, Modul Trade scammed some of the bounty hunters by asking for KYC after it was done (many people don´t want to do any type of KYC), at the moment if you follow the bounty groups in telegram many bounties are being held to avoid a market crash.

Perhaps you can open a thread with the positives.

[Tynovten_]

I also support the process of kyc just because to avoid some people that have more than one account in one project, and some people do this.

However there is one project (cibus) in the process of kyc is very complicated, no one is able to complete correctly until the end. Even if you've done it, you have to send fee in advance to get token. This is very annoying.

In the end I left it. It's up to him, want to give the pay for my work or not.

[paulmaritz]

I also support the process of kyc just because to avoid some people that have more than one account in one project, and some people do this.

However there is one project (cibus) in the process of kyc is very complicated, no one is able to complete correctly until the end. Even if you've done it, you have to send fee in advance to get token. This is very annoying.

In the end I left it. It's up to him, want to give the pay for my work or not.

If you have to send a fee in advance, they're most likely running a scam.

[BackBachvsUp]

for me, KYC is a no-no in an ICO, let alone for bounty (or even airdrop).

my worst experience was with STORIQA.
saw them on ICOBENCH, showed up under the filter "no KYC & no whitelist", so i participated.
few weeks before ICO finished, they said "we're gonna do KYC because we want to make sure there are no criminals involved in our token sale" but they already distribute their tokens to pre-sale buyers, no KYC required lol.

for bounty/airdrop (because the line between bounty & airdrop is pretty much non-existent nowadays), it happened with CLEAR COIN.
at first, they asked participants to fill up 10 info (including reddit, medium, and linkedin, yes, freakin linkedin. what is this, job application?), then they cut it to only 5 info out of 10 required (no talk about KYC at that time).
in the middle of the road, they said KYC is required for investors who invest big (don't remember the exact number), and i take it as for ICO participants only, not for airdrop.
now they say everyone must fill KYC in order to get their token.

there's no way i'll give my ID to strangers for couple of bucks, heck no.
and please guys, think twice about KYC, why do you want to do it for only couple of bucks?

[West0813]

I think everyone here has a bad experience in some ICO's. I have also a bad experience. I joined TOR-Q ALL. After we do everything to promote their project. We have not receive our payment until now. Those developers take away the money of their investors.

[sky9314]

One of the projects I participated in was called KahnChat. I participated in it's Twitter campaign. At the beginning, they did not say need KYC in the bounty ANN ,then when they paid the rewards, they asked people to provide KYC verification.
Here is KahnChat bounty ANN link:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2854032.0

There are also some projects,such as AstorGame, which unilaterally postpone the extension of time of their bounty campaign when the bounty period expires. The bounty pool does not increase.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2608398.0

There is also a bounty called the Symmetry Fund. After four weeks, their team has disappeared. They are a scam project.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2641669.0

I hope to open up a bounty discussion forum where we can share the various experiences of participating in bounty, and analyze together which rewards are trustworthy and which are untrustworthy.

[paulmaritz]

On my private list in terms of which bounty managers to avoid, I have:

1. Sylon - Half-assed promises, ultra slow to update spreadsheets, personal insults, etc.

2. Tokensuite (Member: needmoney) - Not capable of fairly judging work done in English.

You can have the best project, product or service in the world, but I won't help to promote it if you use any of these bounty managers.

I have been part of many successful bounty programs, but the ones that rubbed me the wrong way are:

1. Debitum Network Bounty Program - needmoney

2. CryptoFlix Bounty Program - Sylon

3. Bowheadhealth Bounty Program - Still awaiting payment! Empty promise after empty promise.

[joniboini]

We should add Bezop to this list.
They don't pay a lot of participants due to "they're using bots, low quality, no contribution to token sale" and etc, but never show any transparency on their so-called investigation. Only some participants were paid (and with a smaller payment). No response whatsoever in their thread about this. It was managed by Tokensfund if I remember it correctly.

[minthit]

I have joined a project. It's an airdrop rather than bounty. Means I have not much task to do with it. But, what is bad is that they request KYC for airdrop eligibility and even after filling out the KYC, I didn't get the airdrop. I won't mention the project because I think it's my mistake failing to think properly. I decided not to join any projects requesting KYC for bounties. It makes no sense for me.

[summerblock]

I have joined a project. It's an airdrop rather than bounty. Means I have not much task to do with it. But, what is bad is that they request KYC for airdrop eligibility and even after filling out the KYC, I didn't get the airdrop. I won't mention the project because I think it's my mistake failing to think properly. I decided not to join any projects requesting KYC for bounties. It makes no sense for me.

Why not name them. By doing so you are protecting them and other could suffer like you did. What's the point in coverings shady things?

[joniboini]

I have joined a project. It's an airdrop rather than bounty. Means I have not much task to do with it. But, what is bad is that they request KYC for airdrop eligibility and even after filling out the KYC, I didn't get the airdrop. I won't mention the project because I think it's my mistake failing to think properly. I decided not to join any projects requesting KYC for bounties. It makes no sense for me.

So, is it your faults or their faults?
It didn't make sense to me when you said "it makes no sense for me", while at the same time you said that "I think it's my mistake". Somehow it feels like you're blaming them while at the same time acknowledging that you're at fault for your illegibility to receive the airdrop.

[minthit]

So, is it your faults or their faults?
It didn't make sense to me when you said "it makes no sense for me", while at the same time you said that "I think it's my mistake". Somehow it feels like you're blaming them while at the same time acknowledging that you're at fault for your illegibility to receive the airdrop.

Why not name them. By doing so you are protecting them and other could suffer like you did. What's the point in coverings shady things?

My mistake was that I fail to realize that KYC isn't necessary for airdrop eligibility. I won't say that it's their fault because I feel that requesting KYC is a bit shady but I don't know for sure what they are gonna do with that. I hope it makes sense now.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I hope it makes sense now.

No, actually you're still talking out of both sides of your neck.  This thread is "name and shame", not "whine vaguely about something that's sort of a problem".  Either call them out or be silent.

All of these projects reek of scammy-ness to me.  I've seen so many of them turn out to be scams that it's hard not to become pessimistic--I'm long past the point of just being cynical.

Well then, the project name is ShipChain. I was just afraid that it was just me who thought so.

OK, thank you. 

[paxmao]

My inital attraction to Wax came from my reading of an introductory paper. They stated that it was possible to store records of virtual assets on their blockchain. This related to gaming awards such as armour and weapons, but I wondered if it could be used to record domain name ownership to assist in sales and transfers. I don't understand the concept of CryptoKitties, and I will confess that the name put me off a bit.

Oh well, AFAIK the kitties have different characteristics that are encoded in their DNA (a number) and they can breed and mix pretty much as optimization genetic algorithms do to create new solutions, on this case, new kitties. The weirdest the beast, the pricier apparently.

In technical terms, kitties are an ERC721 token, that is, a non-fungible token an thus a digital collectible.

[minthit]

I hope it makes sense now.

No, actually you're still talking out of both sides of your neck.  This thread is "name and shame", not "whine vaguely about something that's sort of a problem".  Either call them out or be silent.

All of these projects reek of scammy-ness to me.  I've seen so many of them turn out to be scams that it's hard not to become pessimistic--I'm long past the point of just being cynical.

Well then, the project name is ShipChain. I was just afraid that it was just me who thought so.

[Trofo]

I hate projects that change rules in the middle or even better after bounty hunters did all they work. KYC is OK by me, but it is important to be clearly stated from the beginning of the bounty program. That way each of us can decide if they are OK with giving their personal info for that particular project.
One project I feel you can add to OP is Autorship (ATS). I am writing this from memory but proofs can probably be found if necessary. They had referral Airdrop. Each participant should have received 75 tokens for signing up and another 75 for every referral. Of course there was many cheaters and that is when the trouble started. I am OK with all their measures to stop cheaters but they decided in the end that they will simply not pay anybody with less certain amount of ATS tokens??? This resulted with the fact that users without referrals didn't get anything. Consequently cheaters probably profited in the end.

My case: I had few referrals and have received my allotted share of the tokens. I shared my ref link only among my friends and not one of them received their tokens. This was their first taste of crypto world and they immediately felt scammed, which is what I regret the most. Maybe it was a good lesson to learn from the beginning

ATS is worth almost nothing at the moment and i am not following the project closely these days. After that disappointment I just waited for a good time to sell them but it never came.

I hope it makes sense now.

No, actually you're still talking out of both sides of your neck.  This thread is "name and shame", not "whine vaguely about something that's sort of a problem".  Either call them out or be silent.

All of these projects reek of scammy-ness to me.  I've seen so many of them turn out to be scams that it's hard not to become pessimistic--I'm long past the point of just being cynical.

Well then, the project name is ShipChain. I was just afraid that it was just me who thought so.

I have participated in the ShipChain airdrop and they were fair regarding KYC. They stated that KYC is mandatory from the beginning. I have decided to trust them and passed KYC without problems and received my allotted share of the tokens.

[viramarket]

Now I do not remember all the projects which participated in the bounty.But here's the question, I also participated in airdrop but never received a single token.And regalsya in 30-50 different projects.What is the reason?

[joniboini]

Now I do not remember all the projects which participated in the bounty.But here's the question, I also participated in airdrop but never received a single token.And regalsya in 30-50 different projects.What is the reason?

I don't think this is the place to ask about that. Don't you realize what's this thread about?

[viramarket]

Now I do not remember all the projects which participated in the bounty.But here's the question, I also participated in airdrop but never received a single token.And regalsya in 30-50 different projects.What is the reason?

I don't think this is the place to ask about that. Don't you realize what's this thread about?

I understand everything and wrote my vision.Also asking advice from the forum.If you have something to say ,then please tell me.

[allahabadi]

You can add Datawallet too; initially, they closed the Bounty after a couple of weeks; then they decided to pay the bounty hunters; only after KYC was conducted. If you didn't complete the KYC, you could get half the tokens you earned in ETH. 

P.S. Gladius needed KYC too.

[easemypain]

Yes you are very right with all these you have said, talking about CIBUS Token ICO, it wasn't a big issue to KYC but a big issue when you start asking for ether to send bounty rewards to respective participants, for some participant that is there first participation where on earth will they get the ether to send to claim thier rewards.