LunaOnehttps://lunaone.com (scam)IntroductionStephen MCCullah is again behind another project called LunaOne, a metaverse project, and is casting doubt with his smoke and mirrors facade.
As we all know, Stephen McCullah has lied many times before and is involved with many suspicious projects, namely Apollo Fintech.
If this wasn’t enough antics having Stephen involved, we find that Daniel Punzy, a prominent Blockchain entrepreneur and CEO of LunaOne had stepped away from LunaOne abruptly. It was reported he took staff from LunaOne back to his (similar) metaverse project, nuREAL. It also brings to our attention the hiring of Daniel to begin with.
private Telegram group
Then came the cruncher for LunaOne, the XLN token listing price. The price was suppose to be listed at $0.25, however what was seen was a dramatic decline of price ($0.02) with some arguing that the original listing price was not accurate.
https://youtu.be/Ic9Om5b8sPYLunaOne responded claiming economic factors had affected the listing price but was willing to find a resolution, with an airdrop to those involved.
https://youtu.be/_9MgmTv__9c Unfortunately, this resolution has left many ‘investors’ with a bad taste in their mouths and their pockets less full.
I am going to investigate the connections LunaOne has with Stephen McCullah and the smoke and mirrors Stephen seems to be causing. This includes the brief employment of Daniel Puzny as CEO of LunaOne, technical details and other possible connections to dubious projects.
Questions1. One of the main issues of course is the illegal raising of funds via a CDE, ICO or any other method. Basically this raises the fact that it is now a security. LunaOne attempted to raise funds via the token XLN. Daniel Puzny, when CEO of LunaOne claimed they raised over $25m since 1st March 2021.
Unfortunately what we have seen in projects that involve Stephen McCullah is that the rug is being pulled slowly out from under the investors. There are too many RED FLAGS with Stephen McCullah.
McCullah’s previous money grabs (ICO/CDE/DAO) have included APL, GSX (and varying versions to enable lockup), GXB (Gold Inc game currency), MGT, ZGD and LunaOne (and more no doubt).
In tradition of adding confusion with smoke and mirrors Stephen McCullah has claimed not to be the CEO of LunaOne and LunaOne is a DAO. Stephen states that they helped LunaOne with their CDE and collects a fee for doing so. Stephen further states “If I owned it then I would have no problem saying I did”…
What unfortunately perspires for Stephen is recently sent Cease and Desist letters from lawyers from LunaOne to social media influences listing Stephen McCullah as CEO.
In one of the letters dated 22 Dec 2022 it is stated LunaOne is traded under Hyper Technologies Inc. (ie doing business as LunaOne) and states “Mr McCullah is the CEO of HyperTech. HyperTech is the company behind ‘LunaOne’ and is associated with ‘Apollo Fintech’”.
As we can see Stephen does owns Hyper Technologies Inc. (
https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_mo/001642956).
Please see point 6, Cease and Desist letters for more information.
2. It was reported the LunaOne token, XLN price listing on Bitmart was below the initial listing price of $0.25. The price immediately dropped to about $0.02 causing the community to be disgruntled and feeling ripped off. As at 2nd Jan 2023 the XLN token price has decreased further to $0.00796 and is in steady free-fall.
Maybe this initial token listing for LunaOne is the beginning of a rug pull. It is also not uncommon to see price decreases with initial listings, but not to list the token XLN at the advertized price is a huge mistake and indeed a red flag. People based their investments on what they thought the price was going to be listed at.
Even with the proposed airdrop by LunaOne, the attempt to make an amends to this error did not cover the losses investors incurred. Fractures of the community now remain with a larger divide between those for and against the project.
3. The hiring of Daniel Puzny, a prominent Blockchain entrepreneur and his quick departure from the company have raised questions over the validity of LunaOne.
It is a well known fact Steven McCullah is notorious from claiming legitimate people are on their team when in fact they hired for various business tasks, and Steve just adds them as team members within Apollo network. These techniques link people with decent reputations and convinces people when researching that reputable people are involved with Stephen McCullah and his projects when they are not. You just need to read through this Bitcointalk forum for proof of such.
When these reputable people have finished their tasks or are dismissed from the company, their details often remain on advertizing and websites and are not removed.
With Daniel was hired as CEO for LunaOne this added validity to the project. Daniel was vocal about being CEO of LunaOne when he chaired various blockchain events, often mentioning the project.
Daniel was CEO for about a year before a very quick departure from LunaOne and secrecy around this ensued.
Daniel Puzny was indeed the CEO of LunaOne for a very short duration of time. Daniel was tweeted “if he was still CEO” and he answered “no” on 11 Nov 2022.
Daniel Puzny is also running a company called NuReal. When Daniel left Luna one it was reported that he poached staff and took him back to
https://nureal.live private Telegram group
Coincidently, maybe, but the color scheme and what both projects are trying to accomplish are very similar it is uncanny. Could this be the reason Daniel was interested in LunaOne to start with? Was he lured by the promise of a large budget? Alternatively is NuReal part of the next rug pull?
On the 1st Dec 2022 after Daniel left LunaOne Daniel tweeted that “nuREAL is not looking to raise money from cryptocurrency and will not create a token”.
Perhaps nuREAL will be looking at a subscription based arrangement for funds.
The real danger here is the extremely similar projects between LunaOne and nuREAL. When further investigating Daniels social media platforms another company called blackartsound popped up.
https://www.blackartsound.comInterestedly, this has the same logo as nuREAL. On the landing page it states “LunaOne Entertainment is a division of LunaOne that focuses on Concerts, Film, Music, Art, and Events. We will revolutionize content delivery in a fully-immersive and hyper-realistic environment, which will be available through AR, MR, VR, and traditional web and mobile”.
https://www.blackartsound.comIt is the first sentence that is the most important here “LunaOne Entertainment is a division of LunaOne”.
The nuREAL logo is also shown on blackartsound which is of a concern because if Daniels’ company nuREAL is not involved in anything shady why does their logo appear on another project blackartsound that is linked to LunaOne still?
We now have blackartsound being connected to LunaOne, so let’s look out and see where this project goes. Will it be a ICO or CDE?
4. The technical aspects for XLN do not match. XLN is currently a BEP20 Token. There is nothing to suggest an upgrade to the proposed LunaOne-Chain with the proposed 400,000 TPS as advertized in the whitepaper v1.0.
The XLN token is launched on the Binance Smart Chain as a BEP20.
XLN Token, Smart Contrast Address: 0x2e2EA48C9412E0ABb2D6accCeC571C6b6411725a
There are 10,000,000,000 XLN in existence.
In the white paper version 1, dated Aug 2022 it was mentioned a new LunaOne chain is to be implemented allowing up to 400,000 TPS, far above what any other blockchain can currently establish.
The white paper further elaborates on Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) technology and Smart Contracts. It acknowledges that these smart contracts are programs stored on LunaOne-Chain that self-execute when predetermined conditions are met. This solidifies that the fact that the XLN token is suppose to be running on a different chain compared to the one now, BEP20 in order to be able to give LunaOne utility.
Out of the 11 pages in this white paper (Technical Vision) half a page related to facts about the metaverse while the 10.5 pages actually related to nothing because there is no such thing a LunaOne chain. THE XLN token is on the Binance Smart Chain, a BEP20 token. Keep in mind there is no evidence that there is a LunaOne-Chain.
It is therefore reasonable to assume that since the white paper states that the smart contracts for LunaOne, NFT’s and the required transactions per second (TPS) is needed for utility, another chain called LunaOne chain is needed.
Since this is not so and a Bep20 external chain is being used none of this utility has been implemented.
Nowhere in the LunaOne road map does it suggest this LunaOne chain implementation …until they read this lol.
That whole white paper was completely useless.
However, there was mention in an article that there would be a 1:1 swap from the Bep20 token to the LunaOne Chain.
https://stackstashers.com/lunaone/The other white papers LunaOne have published are of equal nonsense. The LunaOne Meta Research paper dated March 2022, version 1 is all information gathered from other resources about the metaverse and has no bearing with any working aspect of LunaOne. A waste of time.
5. Videos and pictures found to be copied and used in the original LunaOna advertizements.
This was an interesting development and @northeastriot (calvinecline6243) on YouTube raised concerns that LunaOne was using digital art assets from Unreal Engine and Shutterstock to promote their campaign.
https://youtube.com/shorts/BttvE42Lbpg?feature=share@northeastriot also suggested to watch
https://youtu.be/4w3mHd5ksPw As we can see LunaOne have advertized some pictures:
https://youtube.com/shorts/PAdWik7JJGk?feature=shareLunaOne did tweet a response and admitted that they did pay for some designs:
LunaOne also claims mainstream access to Steam, Oculus, Xbox and Vive.
It is to be noted that Steam, a huge gaming platform banned blockchain games and NFTs on its platform on October 15, 2021. I am unsure why Steam is even mentioned. Microsoft also banned NFT’s on their platforms leaving me wondering why they would mention these companies at all.
Is it to attract investors by mentioning large well known companies and pretending they are associated with LunaOne? You decide.
6. Cease and Desist Letters
A recent Cease and desist letter addressed to Danny de Hek and The Crypto Granny (YouTube) dated 22 Dec 2022 directly calls out Stephen for being the CEO of HyperTech that is the company behind LunaOne and is associated with Apollo Fintech”.
An Extract from the Cease and Desist Letter:
“As you will no doubt be aware, HyperTech is a Missouri based company that carries on business in the cryptocurrency, metaverse and non-fungible token (NFT) space. Mr McCullah is the CEO of HyperTech. HyperTech is the company behind "LunaOne" and is associated with "Apollo Fintech'. Accordingly, any statements made in respect of
LunaOne and/or ApolloFintech are statements made about HyperTech. To be clear, HyperTech is not associated with the HyperVerse”.
It is clear in the entirety of the letters the Stephen McCullah is in control and is claiming financial damage caused by the said recipients claiming that LunaOne is a scam.
At this point I am sure you have drawn your own conclusions with LunaOne.
History of LunaOneIn the beginning before being rebranded LunaOne was known as HyperX. It was cited that because the company HyperX was already taken and owned by HP Inc, and to avoid copyright infringements a name change was required.
This rebrand and was tweeted about 3 March 2022 according the official LunaOne Twitter account and on YouTube as seen below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn8jBmI-yZkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn8jBmI-yZkStephen McCullah was also questioned about the relationship of the companies Hyper Technologies and LunaOne explaining “They set up Hyper Technologies for the transfers for LunaOne because it’s much easier in the US” (
https://medium.com/@LunaOne/common-questions-queries-part-2-ee919dcb1a63).
As seen on opencorporates we can see Stephen McCullah is the owner of Hyper Technologies (
https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_mo/001642956).
On the LunaOne website we can see Hyper Technologies is doing business as LunaOne.
“Hyper Technologies Inc. DBA LunaOne
109 E Dallas Street
Mount Vernon, MO 65712”
It reads Hyper Technologies Inc. Doing(D) Business(B) As A) LunaOne.
This was the transition of HyperX to LunaOne.
ConclusionStephen McCullah is involved in this project. I suggest you should not continue and keep away from this project. Do not invest.
Stephen likes to collect funds for dubious projects and to slowly pull the rug from under investors. It has been acknowledges that Stephen is behind the CDE fund raising for LunaOne. It has been discussed many times that raising funds in this matter makes it a security with all the legal ramifications.
Stephen is known for his antics with using well known blockchain influencers and employing them for different jobs. When they are let go or have finished the job their profile is continued to be used to promote business giving it validity. These techniques link people with decent reputations and convinces people when researching that reputable people are involved with Stephen and his projects when they are not, as in LunaOne.
This was seen with Daniel Puzny when he mysteriously parted ways with LunaOne. As reported he took staff back to his company nuREAL. nuREAL has an uncanny resemblance to LunaOne striving for the same areas in the metaverse. On departure of LunaOne, Daniel tweeted “nuREAL is not looking to raise money from cryptocurrency and will not create a token”.
Further investigation into Daniel revealed a platform to another company called blackartsound.
https://www.blackartsound.comInterestedly, this has the same logo as nuREAL. On the landing page it states “LunaOne Entertainment is a division of LunaOne that focuses on Concerts, Film, Music, Art, and Events”…That’s correct, you heard it LunaOne Entertainment.
If Daniels’ company nuREAL is not involved in anything shady why does their logo appear on another project blackartsound? Blackartsound is now connected to LunaOne, so let’s look out and see where this project goes. Will it be a ICO or CDE? Of course it will be “subdivision” to LunaOne.
With the storm created by the Dev’s not listing the XLN token at initial offering of $0.25 as they advertized, it deeply divided the community. The investors watched XLN plummet in price to $0.02 and as of today it is $0.00796 and falling. The community was very angry and many people have lost money.
This unfortunately did look like a rug pull, even with LunaOne doing damage control many people are now suspicious of this project. People based their investments on what they thought the price was going to be listed at.
Even with the proposed airdrop by LunaOne, the attempt to rectify this error, did not overcome losses investors incurred.
The XLN token is on the Binance Smart Chain as a Bep20 token, far from advertized as a separate LunaOne-Chain. The LunaOne white paper suggests that all assets and utility is required through the LunaOne-Chain. Since this is not so and a Bep20 external chain is being used, none of this utility has been implemented.
Keep in mind there is no evidence that there is a LunaOne-Chain and nowhere in the LunaOne road map does it suggest this LunaOne chain implementation. Without this new chain LunaOnes’ metaverse project cannot work.
There was mention in an article that there would be a 1:1 swap from the Bep20 token to the LunaOne Chain but no other information was given.
It seems very shady to raise funds with a token that no-one can use in the proposed LunaOne metaverse then promise a 1:1 swap later. There is no proof that another LunaOne chain is being worked on to enable utility. Without this chain there is digital assets or NFT’s. You are asking people to blindly give you money for a project you haven’t started.
Then we have @northeastriot (calvinecline6243) on YouTube raising concerns that LunaOne was using digital art assets from Unreal Engine and Shutterstock to promote their campaign. Although not unheard of these art images were made to look like LunaOna had developed them.
LunaOne did respond rightly to say they had purchased content. It was the fact that LunaOne tried to portray those images as their own and were caught red handed and this casts a shadow on this project.
While looking into LunaOne, two social media influencers Danny de Hek and The Crypto Granny (YouTube) were issued cease and desist letters. In the letters it calls out Stephen for being the CEO of HyperTech that is the company behind LunaOne and is associated with Apollo Fintech”. This is in contrast to Stephen McCullah maintaining he has no power over LunaOne and its operations. Stephen claims to only have collected a fee for helping with the CDE.
It is clear that Stephen McCullah is in control and is claiming financial damage caused by the recipients claiming that LunaOne is a scam.
At this point I am sure you have drawn your own conclusions with LunaOne.
Do you want to invest in a blockchain that there is no evidence that it is being made? Do you want to hand over funds without this proof? Were you part of buying a security that was not registered? Do you trust a company that used other peoples art assets and portrayed them as their own? Did it look like a rug pull when XLN was not listed at $0.25 as advertized then the price drastically dropped to $0.02? Do you want to invest with Stephen McCullah? LOL
