A suggestion for ICO promoters and bounty managers

[coin8coin8]

I agree on other suggestions but I don't agree with KYC implementation. We all know that personal information is a very sensitive information that I cannot afford  to compromise. In terms of dumping of coins, I don't believe that the bounty participants are the main reason of dumping of value because the campaign allocation is so small compared to investors and team allocation.

As I have already clarified many times, I don't want the bounty hunters to go through the KYC procedure. It's just for the ICO promoters, and to an extent the bounty campaign managers. Now if you are planning to raise $50 million or $100 million, then you need to take some responsibilities.  

The problem is who will supervise these frozen deposits？I don't think this is what Bitcointalk staff should do. As a Bitcointalk staff, their job is to ensure the clean and order of the forum Instead of being custodians.
So we need some other people，But what if custodian collude with the promoter? Who is going to supervise them, this is a never-ending problem.
In my opinion, the best way is to set up a credible supervisory body, preferably with a government background.

[Karlinz]

Very good concern here, I got introduced into this sometime this year but going through threads and seeing what most persons complain are typically addressed by the poster, the implementation may bot be absolute but I am very much in support of the aspect there developers should deposit some amount in escrow before launching a campaign here. That way scammers will be reduced

[btcluisdiki]

Great article by the OP and I agree to all what is being highlighted on his information. Indeed, there are many scam ICO's operating in this forum and I had been one of the victim on almost several bounties that I had participated where I ended up not being rewarded from my participation wherein right after the campaign there was no update on the spreadsheet and no information relayed on the Telegram. Bounty managers should have a strict requirement and I believe it should start with FULL MEMBER rank and  upwards. I hope with my new ICO participation, I could be able to get a reward soon.

[bryant.coleman]

The problem is who will supervise these frozen deposits？I don't think this is what Bitcointalk staff should do. As a Bitcointalk staff, their job is to ensure the clean and order of the forum Instead of being custodians.

What about the trusted users here who offer escrow services? There are a lot of users available with DT2 or higher. The big three (Monbux, Tomatocage & OgNasty) have built quite a bit of reputation for themselves. And then there are others such as SebastianJu and PsychoticBoy.

[markieeeloy]

We need to list all the bad bounty managers. Let everyone not join these bounty projects.

Rather than listing the bad bounty managers, it may be easier to list the good ones. Because there are thousands of scammers out there and if someone is blacklisted then the scammers can easily find a replacement. A good idea may be to limit the qualification to DT2 or higher.

That is a good idea. Because right now, almost all of the ICO Bounty campaign bounty manager has a negative or a red trust. And we see a good ICO to participate to, but we doubt because the bounty manager in charge have a negative trust. So better to have a list, and on that way, we can find more ICO bounty campaign in a easier yet a secured way. Thank you for that.

[Nisharawal]

I was surprise about the evolution of the bounty campaigns too, particularly the reporting of the social media tweets and reposts which are posted in the thread. We can't discuss anything on the thread anymore because of those reports. I have seen several projects that didn't pay the bounty participants, too bad those who joined are promoting it for them only to find out they are scam.

It is quite irritating to see all the social media bounty reporting in the thread, when they can easily create a spreadsheet-based system for the same. Imagine if 10,000 participants are participating in the social media bounty (FB, Twitter.etc). There will be 10K posts in 7 days.

Overall I'm with you totally. just some remarks

500 USD is way too little for scammers. on the other hand, legit projects find it bad for their business if this downpayment system is installed.
I do like KYC requirement for bounty managers and some restrictions or suggestions how the bounties are performed. Just cant believe how so many megathreads are created just because everyone has to declare their stats. do the managers even like to waste so much time on doing this manual labor??? there are so much more efficient ways to gather info and main thing is that they are outside of forum space. i can bet it cleans up 10% (20%? 30%?) of the spamposts

OR bitcointalk can just create separate part for bounty hunters, where they can keep their stats. a place most other users never have to go

[ZeljkoNemet]

Well, most ICO-s did KYC verification at some sites like ICO Bench, Coinschedule etc... so, for example, we just recently started the campaign and even thought KYC is not possible on bitcointalk, I personally did it on Coinschedule and foundico for example and you can use it as a proof that everything is legit

[BitcoinGuruOne]

4. All the bounty campaign participants must be carefully screened before the payout. In order to prevent token dumping, a few steps can be taken. Since the bounty reward is 1% to 3% of the total amount, the promoters themselves can purchase this portion from the exchanges. Or they can make the bounty payments in BTC/ETH. There should also be a condition that the promoters should hold on to 90% of their tokens for at least 12 months. (Because I have noticed that it is the promoters who do dumping in the vast majority of the cases, and they blame it on the bounty hunters).

You should now better by now that this is irrational and ridicolous. First of all everyone is doing it for the money and they have the right to sell their tokens when they want.

On other hand teams shoud be takeing care of their token price and it is easiliy done, and it seems that only 1% is doing it right or semi right.They should
1) At least lock bounty tokens for a month after the listing, this would prevent the otken to be crashed in the begining in DEX exchnages. And after a month thre would be some buy orders which would prevent tokens of being dumped to the level if it was at the start.
2) Pay in ETH and avoid token drop alltogether.

5. KYC must be mandatory for ICO promoters and bounty campaign managers (unless they are on level 2 DT). If this is done, then the scammers won't be able to set up multiple fake ICOs.

This could actually make sense but it will never happen to this forum and if there was such such thing then who would stop these campaign management to be takens offf platform?

[BogdanGFTP]

One of the most interesting post in this section! Your ideas could be very good for Bounty participants. But there is some issues that will not allow to bounty hunters to be payed well. One of them is small credibility of ICOs - the bets of it could not gain more than 1 million usd.

[acheampong64]

Very good post made. This is what we want the forum to be. They've been cheating bounty hunters for long and in the same way hunters have been cheating for long. I really wished they could take this into consideration and put it to action.
What I'd like most is that bounties should be bought back and paid in either ETH/BTC.

[bryant.coleman]

What I'd like most is that bounties should be bought back and paid in either ETH/BTC.

There were some ICOs which paid the rewards in BTC/ETH, but such campaigns are too few and far in between. 90% of the ICO promoters want to make quick profits. So they prefer to pay in tokens than in BTC or ETH.

[piepie.asean]

I sincerely support your comments, it's wonderful, being a bounty hunter I wish the above conditions were the forum applied to the bonus campaign, to reduce the cheating issue, cheated Island and sincerely thank you, I support you.

[tenebriscaelum]

To be honest your points is right on the spot specially the requirement to post an ANN thread in the forum since it might have the potential to weed out the scam and questionable bounties or ICOs and to potentially raise the fund raising of legit bounties and ICOs in the forum, since I have seen that in the most of the bounties and ICOs that have good potential and are legit are getting small crowdfunding due to these behavior and the ones that are suffering are the bounty hunters, though I would not say that this is a full proof resolution since that in every structure their would be loopholes and in what I am seeing here is that if the promoters get their desired profit in the crowdfunding if their so called projects then they could just move leave the held amount in the escrow account. I feel like making the fee bit higher(1-2%) would make sense since the promoter that would want to scam investors and bounty hunters would think twice before they would continue with making an ANN thread in the forum.

[bryant.coleman]

To be honest your points is right on the spot specially the requirement to post an ANN thread in the forum since it might have the potential to weed out the scam and questionable bounties or ICOs and to potentially raise the fund raising of legit bounties and ICOs in the forum, since I have seen that in the most of the bounties and ICOs that have good potential and are legit are getting small crowdfunding due to these behavior and the ones that are suffering are the bounty hunters, though I would not say that this is a full proof resolution since that in every structure their would be loopholes and in what I am seeing here is that if the promoters get their desired profit in the crowdfunding if their so called projects then they could just move leave the held amount in the escrow account. I feel like making the fee bit higher(1-2%) would make sense since the promoter that would want to scam investors and bounty hunters would think twice before they would continue with making an ANN thread in the forum.

Making the fee at 1% or 2% is a wonderful idea, but in that case the promoters may say that it is too high and may go to other forums and post their ANN there. Anyway, even a 0.1% fee can weed out 90% of the scammers, IMO.

[coin8coin8]

Making the fee at 1% or 2% is a wonderful idea, but in that case the promoters may say that it is too high and may go to other forums and post their ANN there. Anyway, even a 0.1% fee can weed out 90% of the scammers, IMO.

If the softcap of an ICO project is set to $1 million, then the 0.1% fee is $1,000, which seems too low, and I think 1% is better. If the fee is 0.1%, it still can't stop most of the scammers, because many ICOs hardcap seem to be very high, but the softcap is actually very low, and the fee usually depends on the amount of softcap.
At least I think that for scammers, $1,000 is not a big obstacle.

[Absolutep]

I totally agree with you that promising project need to be protected as well as investors and bounty hunters,but I feel depositing 1% when you stand to make 100% does not count,you know,giving 1$ when I know I can make 10% cannot be a problem to scammer.I feel,if we van have a body that will regulate the number of project been develop and also put bounty managers at check,we might be able to create a new dawn for crypto at large.

[bryant.coleman]

At least I think that for scammers, $1,000 is not a big obstacle.

I beg to differ!!!!

I have been a victim of many scams and now I believe that I know how the scammers think. The scammers are not guaranteed of a positive outcome. So if they invest $1,000 they don't know whether they will be getting a positive return on that investment. This can scare away more than 90% of the scammers.

[tisumagic]

I sincerely support your comments, it's wonderful, being a bounty hunter I wish the above conditions were the forum applied to the bonus campaign, to reduce the cheating issue, cheated Island and sincerely thank you, I support you.

many fraud in the crypto world, only we are not easy to believe quickly, especially in the negative news that circulates, because all will not necessarily be certainly, it is better to stick to our stand

[Wayan_Pedjeng]

Even previously a lot of the users had proposed to put some restriction on who are able to post in the ANN section. But no steps were taken and I am at a loss to understand why the admins are ignoring this issue for so long.

[Trollinator]

Being a member of Bitcointalk for more than 6 years, I am quite a bit bothered by what happening in the bounty section for the past few months. This is what I have noticed:

1. A lot of scam projects are creating bounty campaigns and ANN threads. Once the bounty campaign is finished, they vanish all of a sudden without paying the bounty hunters and leaving the investors in limbo.

2. The quality of the bounty managers have gone down. Junior level members are acting as bounty managers and they often don't update the spreadsheets and sometimes indulge in cheating by enrolling proxy accounts to the campaign.

3. Large number of newbs are signing up for bounty campaigns, often enrolling using purchased Facebook / Twitter accounts (esp. in Social media bounty). The quality of posts being done by the bounty campaign participants have gone down quite a lot during the last few months.

4. Even those bounties which pay end up listing at 80% or 90% discount to their original prices and in the end the honest bounty campaign participants end up with very small rewards. On the other hand, those signing up with 10-12 multiple accounts end up with sizeable rewards. And it is the latter category, which indulges in token dumping.

5. There is no incentive to hold on to the tokens, as a majority of the ICO promoters dump their tokens in the market and vanish. If you check, the vast majority of the listed ICOs are in a dormant or defunct state now.

I have a few suggestions to resolve some of the issues, before the issues go out of hand.

1. There should be a requirement that if anyone want to post an ANN in Bitcointalk, he must deposit 0.1% of the total amount (of the softcap) in an escrow account. For example, if a project is planning to raise $50,000,000 from the investors, then before creating the ANN thread the promoters must deposit $50,000 in either BTC or ETH to an escrow account held by the Bitcointalk staff. If the soft-cap is smaller, like $500,000 then the escrow amount should be 0.1% of that, i.e $500. If the promoters vanish, then this amount should be forfeited. Also, if the promoters go back on their promises once the tokens are listed, then this escrow amount should be frozen and may be (partially) released only if they achieve the objectives which they had promised earlier.

2. There should be a list of approved bounty managers and those outside this list should not be allowed to act in this role. There are a lot of trusted bounty managers here, like Yahoo62278 and Lutpin. I don't think that newbs should be given priority over them.

3. In order to participate in a bounty campaign, it should be mandatory for all the users to post their ETH address in the "Location" field in the profile. I have noticed a large number of spammers using someone else's BTT account and their own ETH address to enroll in to social media bounties. This step will put and end to the practise and will weed out the spammers.

4. All the bounty campaign participants must be carefully screened before the payout. In order to prevent token dumping, a few steps can be taken. Since the bounty reward is 1% to 3% of the total amount, the promoters themselves can purchase this portion from the exchanges. Or they can make the bounty payments in BTC/ETH. There should also be a condition that the promoters should hold on to 90% of their tokens for at least 12 months. (Because I have noticed that it is the promoters who do dumping in the vast majority of the cases, and they blame it on the bounty hunters).

5. KYC must be mandatory for ICO promoters and bounty campaign managers (unless they are on level 2 DT). If this is done, then the scammers won't be able to set up multiple fake ICOs.

I am posting this because now the real impact is becoming obvious. Experienced users are staying away from bounty campaigns and even very promising ICOs are getting listed at heavily-discounted rates. This can't go on forever.

Good ICOs need to be protected from the negativity in the market created by the fake ICOs.
Honest bounty hunters needs to be protected from the cheaters
Properly run bounty campaigns and airdrops should be appreciated and differentiated from the poorly managed ones.

It sounds like you believe that high ranking members of BCT are not scamming too. Higher probability as the were farming many BCT accounts. BCT rankings has nothing to do with managing a bounty. So your saying that BCT should force projects to use managers just because they are from ranked members of the BCT community? You opinion sound very biased indeed. I hear a lot of make them pay!! Make these “particular” people rich, but little about how to protect bounty participants. I think this OP has it right!!
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5065599.msg47700518#msg47700518