Hey there, flora_digitalis
I came across your post just now, and gave a good thought about your initial post and the other replies you gave to the other supposed "contributors". I'm mostly active within the Korean subforum, and I have translated several ICO announcements before due to the allure of "rewards". But as I get to translate these announcements, I must read through, digest and translate every sentence I read -- and as I digested these business propositions and proposed business models for how they'll reward the investors, I came to the realization (via first-hand) that these are blatantly scam/fraud.
So, I did this: I went back to each of my announcements (or at least most) and wrote a warning post advising all potential ICO investors to beware scam ICOs, along with major red flags to look out for (some patterns I've picked up).
Let me point out some that I gathered (I gather you can auto-translate my Korean text, but I'll also summarize):
* Anti-shilling my own translated post - I wrote that there are suspicious information that needs to be vetted, like publicized team/location info, as well as their marketing content (looks fabricated).
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3033545.msg34277117#msg34277117* Anti-shilling my own translated post - I also wrote that there has been no updates whatsoever on their webpage, and there seems to be no developer team.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3031137.msg34270832#msg34270832* Within my translated announcements, I explained why one needs to be extra careful with these supposed ICOs and that people need to look for these red flags, such as:
- Sudden extensions of token sale dates because of unfavorable market conditions or low investment revenue
- Amateur-ish / seemingly non-existent core team members
- Whitepapers that contain minimal/non-existent details regarding technology, use of funds, etc. or non-professionalism overall
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3033545.msg33621495#msg33621495https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3031137.msg33621151#msg33621151* Warning against investing DRG token sale (on my own post) due to lack of any developer or seemingly impactful core team members, as well as lack of any publicized progress despite their promises
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3015952.msg33427273#msg33427273https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3015952.msg32303258#msg32303258I think that's it for now.
Either way, please let me know if you have any suggestions for other future content I can share. It also doesn't help that our only Korean subforum moderator has been inactive for many many months.
Thanks for reading!
Edit: PS: I really like your intent. Months ago, I took upon this task of translating this Russian whitepaper for some 'healthcare' related blockchain startup (EHFirst), but as I dove deep down into the details, there were so many red flags, so I spent over an hour on their Telegram channel just blasting away at the community managers and detailing all the wrong things about their whitepaper/business plan. It's safe to say that they won't be succeeding. I uploaded a few screenshots I took for you to see (for enjoyment- I took them to share with a friend on how stupid some ICOs are):
https://imgur.com/5mIKkyfhttps://imgur.com/JRkpBwOhttps://imgur.com/O607L3shttps://imgur.com/TAV2QRGhttps://imgur.com/vLkAFldhttps://imgur.com/lR3rEK1