How do you evaluate a cryptocurrency ANN thread?

[quixote.moon]

I'm working on a set of exhaustive research guidelines for evaluating a cryptocurrency project. Partially as a response to the various cryptocurrency ratings agencies, and evaluation initiatives, with non-transparent evaluation standards.

This is the first in a series of "How do you evaluate?" posts for each section or phase in evaluating a cryptocurrency project. As I create each new post, I will link them all together.

This series of discussions will detail the following categories:

• ANN Post(s) \ BCT
• Official Website(s)
• Whitepaper
• Project Background \ Technology Used \ Current State of the Project
• Team
• Github
• Competitors \ similar projects
• Partners \ who plans to use the tech
• Community \ Network Effects
• Advertising
• Revenue
• Roadmap \ History \ Upcoming Events (past\present\future)
• Research guidelines specific to ICO phase \ pre-launch
• The difference between evaluating a whitepaper for an Ethereum based project, and one with its own chain

Over the next few days, each bulleted point above will have it's own individual thread detailing the guidelines I've already collected, in hopes of crowd-sourcing crypto-vetting techniques, and eventually creating a complete and exhaustive set of research goals for investigating a cryptocurrency project.

Once the exhaustive guide is assembled, the intention is to create three tiers of research goals thereby establishing a community standard. 1. The short list 2. Due Dilligence 3. Exhaustive

For this post, please respond with any expansion on these research guidelines for evaluating a bct ANN thread, and its bitcointalk presence in general. Not necessarily the steps that take us away from bitcointalk, unless you think its very important to mention here.  This thread is for detailing the evaluation of an ANN post\thread, any other threads created for the project, as well as any other BCT presence the project has.

Also helpful would be if you can let me know if you think that I've left out any important section of crypto research in the above bulleted list.


ANN Thread(s) \ BCT

Collect a list of all relevant btc posts related to this project.
Also, include a link to bounty threads or any other official threads.
Links for any non-official threads about this topic if they exist and are significant.

Note author reputation

For younger projects \ ico phase:
Sending devs a personal message inquiring about the project to see how responsive they are may be a good idea.

Make note of presentation of the post, including images and spelling.
Make note of whether relevant links have been included in OP, as well as that they are all working.

I'd like to see links to chat\social media\github\whitepaper\website(s) on the ANN post

read through the thread to find out how responsive team has been to questions \ criticisms. make note of any significant anomalies with attention to forum rank of the message sender

Be aware of experienced writers comments, and also look for negative messages, sometimes it could be a warning sign. Use Select [All] to see all comments in the thread and use CTRL + F (Windows) to search for red flag words like ‘scam’, ‘con’, ‘MLM’.]

If multiple ANN posts for the same project, make note of the reason.  It might be that project leads are trying to sidestep detractors\scandal, or there has been a re-branding.

I'd like to hear some opinions on bounty threads as well. What makes a bounty a good what makes a bounty bad?


That's it, pretty short, but all I have for ANN Thread research goals. In the coming days I will continue with the process by creating new posts which will be connected by links. It's going to be a big guide by the end and will be easier to discuss in separate topics. I'm trying to generally keep the sections in order that project research might logically progress.

Any additional tips or guidelines you can offer on evaluating an ANN Post\thread(s) would be gratefully appreciated.

I'm looking for red flags or any other indicators that you might look for in the confines of bitcointalk.org.
Especially helpful would be things that you look for, but only if you encounter a particular warning sign.

Thank You!