Here are some red flags that the ConcourseQ community found while looking into the Sphere ICO:
• None of the team apart from CEO have Sphere listed in LinkedIn profile.
• CEO has limited Social Media experience, previous career history - 10 years in Hotel industry and 8 years in a Marketing company.
• Sphere Social Ltd only registered in London with Companies House mid December 2017 within minimal starting Capital.
• CTO is listed only as Blockchain Enthusiast, previous experience includes “functional analist” for ATOS.
• Claims to be ERC20 compliant, however ICO is not accepting Ethereum, therefore no smart contract to ensure.
• Whitepaper spends a lot of time talking about how current advertising campaigns waste money and are inefficient, however gives no detail about how Sphere will counteract this.
• Whitepaper makes lots of bold statements and empty promises made with no strategic detail to validate them.
• Confirms Sphere is currently available for download on Google Play and iOS, but cannot locate Sphere on iOS app store.
• Even though Google play reviews are around 4.2, many reviews are complaining about difficulties logging into App due to “parameter errors”.
• Reviews of app suggest that users can get free tokens/coins by creating an account and logging into app - Therefore has usage of app been incentivised for the purpose of publicising ICO?
• Unsure if current MVP on Google Play uses blockchain as suggested in Whitepaper?
• Should data and other multimedia files be held on Blockchain as indicated in Whitepaper, they have not detailed how this will impact performance of Social Media platform and how they intend to address scalability issues.
• Claims it does not require ID verification to make anonymous transactions, however their example of someone selling their own mobile phone through the app, so anonymity will be compromised once the delivery details for the phone are exchanged with the buyer. Additionally, there is no recourse for the user if they do not receive the phone.
• No detail given about how users can control their data, how consumers will benefit for discounted purchases and how businesses will be able to access targeted consumer groups.
Link:
https://concourseq.io/Q/Sphere