Zentoshi- Shilling their own Ann thread

[Rikafip]

Zentoshi Ann
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5196479.0

Archive
http://archive.md/gLQbw


They  had some accusations that they paid shilling services as there was suspicious newbie account activity, and of course they denied that, but if you check some of the accounts that are pretending to ask questions are actually their own team members.


Their CMO Cameron


His contacts are



Then i saw bitcointalk user Yankeeruinx asking some questions and OP answering. Is it just a coincidence that their CMO has same twitter and reddit username as bitcointalk account asking questions in their Ann? I don't think so!




Proof  that is the same person behind  twitter, reddit and bitcointalk acc is that all those 3 accounts are active on Stakenet social media platforms.

Twitter


Reddit


Stakenet Ann




Then another case of very similar bitcointalk  username as their team member, asking questions, vilajerry5


Zentoshi team member Jerry Villa

[1715229068]

1715229068

[1715229068]

1715229068

[1715229068]

1715229068

[smyslov]

They do not first read and adhere to the rules of this forum when creating a thread, and these bumping services thrives on this, they offer their services to devs who do not know the forum rules and this is the reason they landed here, it's not only about your project, it's also how you behave here when promoting your project here.

[logfiles]

I would never trust a project. It displays all character of fraud and scam. Employing ANN bumping and shilling services is outright unprofessional and untrustworthy behavior.

Members should keep their eyes peeled and avoid wasting time and resources on such shady projects.

[allyouracid]

Where does the info come from that Cameron has the yankee Twitter handle?

I know Yankee from StakeNet and he's a decent person. Can't imagine him being involved with such shady stuff. Gonna link him to this thread.

[Rikafip]

Where does the info come from that Cameron has the yankee Twitter handle?

I know Yankee from StakeNet and he's a decent person. Can't imagine him being involved with such shady stuff. Gonna link him to this thread.

As you can see that's what Zentoshi team said, and they shared those reddit and twitter handles.
If you check his twitter, you will see that he is indeed sharing StakeNet tweets, and 2 days ago he retweeted Zentoshi tweet.
Maybe Zentoshi team put him as their team member without him knowing, things like that happen.

[Yankeeruinx]

Hello,

I'm not a "shilling" service. I work for Stakenet and have done for nearly 2 years now.

I was contacted by Zentoshi to help them with their marketing. After talking with the team and checking everything out I agreed to help them as long as it didn't distract from my work with Stakenet as I was interested in their work on game services.

I helped them setup their Medium page, get their social channels organised, setup a social media promo for Twitter, Facebook and Medium.

When they launched their ANN thread I did indeed make 2 posts on it to give it a bump up to help give it some visibility. Sorry if this is such a huge no no on here. To be fair in regards to the testnet question I actually didn't know at the time so while I could have just asked in the Discord I posted here as I was looking through BTT at the time anyway when I thought about it.

So there you go I made 2 posts, one of which was actually a genuine question at the time, I am the devil lol

[wolfington12]

Hello,

I'm not a "shilling" service. I work for Stakenet and have done for nearly 2 years now.

I was contacted by Zentoshi to help them with their marketing. After talking with the team and checking everything out I agreed to help them as long as it didn't distract from my work with Stakenet as I was interested in their work on game services.

I helped them setup their Medium page, get their social channels organised, setup a social media promo for Twitter, Facebook and Medium.

When they launched their ANN thread I did indeed make 2 posts on it to give it a bump up to help give it some visibility. Sorry if this is such a huge no no on here. To be fair in regards to the testnet question I actually didn't know at the time so while I could have just asked in the Discord I posted here as I was looking through BTT at the time anyway when I thought about it.

So there you go I made 2 posts, one of which was actually a genuine question at the time, I am the devil lol

What's the actual accusation here? OP just feels... salty.

[Yankeeruinx]

Hello,

I'm not a "shilling" service. I work for Stakenet and have done for nearly 2 years now.

I was contacted by Zentoshi to help them with their marketing. After talking with the team and checking everything out I agreed to help them as long as it didn't distract from my work with Stakenet as I was interested in their work on game services.

I helped them setup their Medium page, get their social channels organised, setup a social media promo for Twitter, Facebook and Medium.

When they launched their ANN thread I did indeed make 2 posts on it to give it a bump up to help give it some visibility. Sorry if this is such a huge no no on here. To be fair in regards to the testnet question I actually didn't know at the time so while I could have just asked in the Discord I posted here as I was looking through BTT at the time anyway when I thought about it.

So there you go I made 2 posts, one of which was actually a genuine question at the time, I am the devil lol

What's the actual accusation here? OP just feels... salty.

Calling me a shilling service I guess. First they got the hump on because Zentoshi didn't disclose links to team members social media profiles like LinkedIn, so they did disclose them and now they got hump on about this instead.

[busminer]

Hello,

I'm not a "shilling" service. I work for Stakenet and have done for nearly 2 years now.

I was contacted by Zentoshi to help them with their marketing. After talking with the team and checking everything out I agreed to help them as long as it didn't distract from my work with Stakenet as I was interested in their work on game services.

I helped them setup their Medium page, get their social channels organised, setup a social media promo for Twitter, Facebook and Medium.

When they launched their ANN thread I did indeed make 2 posts on it to give it a bump up to help give it some visibility. Sorry if this is such a huge no no on here. To be fair in regards to the testnet question I actually didn't know at the time so while I could have just asked in the Discord I posted here as I was looking through BTT at the time anyway when I thought about it.

So there you go I made 2 posts, one of which was actually a genuine question at the time, I am the devil lol

Hi, I know you for a long time on the Stakenet project,but I couldn't imagine you doing  shilling" service  
just kidding man, you can count on my support, if topikstarter will not be enough of your explanations that you are not paid shilling service provider...

[AlessandroInnerfire]

They  had some accusations that they paid shilling services as there was suspicious newbie account activity, and of course they denied that, but if you check some of the accounts that are pretending to ask questions are actually their own team members.

.....

bla bla bla

One thing is shilling, another is making some tactical question to rise people curiosity.
Each project has to emerge somehow, and i honestly prefer this kind of approach to the classical fomo-boy who tries to lure you into sh.. amefull projects

I repeat, shilling and doing marketing are different worlds.
The first one necessarily includes to lie, the second maybe not (and this is not the case if you read Yankee interventions).

If you do not know the difference, maybe it's time to question yourself before opening threads.
Sorry for being harsh, i just think you should spend your time by denouncing REAL shilling cases.

@Rikafip

[The Sceptical Chymist]

They do not first read and adhere to the rules of this forum when creating a thread

Nope, they don't.  I suspect most of these garbage ICOs don't read or even care that there are rules here.  And frankly it amazes me that these scams (assuming this is one) are still being perpetrated.  That means they have to still be profitable, which means people are still buying these coins, investing money in the projects, and helping them to advertise.  Unbelievable.

I would never trust a project. It displays all character of fraud and scam.

Yep.  ANN bumping is a fairly old practice, and it could be that the project is just being dishonestly aggressive in marketing it--but I doubt it.  My guess is that it is indeed a scam, though I could be completely wrong and I'm not accusing this project of scamming.  That isn't a hard guess, because over 9/10ths of them seem to be, or are proven to be in the end.  Bumping ANN threads incessantly isn't OK though.

Edit:

You clearly know nothing about Zentoshi as it’s not even an ICO so.......

That's true.  But the thread bumping I do know about and it's the same principle as any other shill or chronic bumper abides by.  Pardon my ignorance about Zentoshi.  I don't follow much else besides bitcoin and a small handful of altcoins.

[Yankeeruinx]

They do not first read and adhere to the rules of this forum when creating a thread

Nope, they don't.  I suspect most of these garbage ICOs don't read or even care that there are rules here.  And frankly it amazes me that these scams (assuming this is one) are still being perpetrated.  That means they have to still be profitable, which means people are still buying these coins, investing money in the projects, and helping them to advertise.  Unbelievable.

I would never trust a project. It displays all character of fraud and scam.

Yep.  ANN bumping is a fairly old practice, and it could be that the project is just being dishonestly aggressive in marketing it--but I doubt it.  My guess is that it is indeed a scam, though I could be completely wrong and I'm not accusing this project of scamming.  That isn't a hard guess, because over 9/10ths of them seem to be, or are proven to be in the end.  Bumping ANN threads incessantly isn't OK though.

You clearly know nothing about Zentoshi as it’s not even an ICO so.......

[Rikafip]

Hello,

I'm not a "shilling" service. I work for Stakenet and have done for nearly 2 years now.

When they launched their ANN thread I did indeed make 2 posts on it to give it a bump up to help give it some visibility.

Hi there

I don't think that anyone would question your intentions if you are just active on the thread, but if a team member start asking questions about the project he is part of, and then other team member answering, it will be seen as Ann thread bumping , or something similar. Especially if it is combined by bunch of newbie accounts doing the same thing.

One thing is shilling, another is making some tactical question to rise people curiosity.
Each project has to emerge somehow, and i honestly prefer this kind of approach to the classical fomo-boy who tries to lure you into sh.. amefull projects

I repeat, shilling and doing marketing are different worlds.
The first one necessarily includes to lie, the second maybe not (and this is not the case if you read Yankee interventions).

If you do not know the difference, maybe it's time to question yourself before opening threads.
Sorry for being harsh, i just think you should spend your time by denouncing REAL shilling cases.

@Rikafip

Those "tactical questions" as you called them is standard practice of Ann thread bumpers, and it is dishonest tactic, and is something that is frowned upon on this forum, accounts involved in that regularly get tagged.

Maybe this is the case of Ann thread bumping, not shilling, but it still something that is not advisable if you want your project to be taken seriously.

[Yankeeruinx]

I'm not going to argue with that as it's a fair assessment of the situation on my part in that it was to bump the thread to give it some visibility.

I could have easily asked the question on Discord so it didn't need to be posted on the ANN thread. 

[allyouracid]

I think these explanations pretty much explain the situation. Guess this "case" can be considered solved…?

[Rikafip]

I think these explanations pretty much explain the situation. Guess this "case" can be considered solved…?

Not quite yet.

If you check these 2 accounts that wrote few messages in Zentoshi Ann thread, you will see that they write in same Ann threads consistently, and with them mostly the same group of accounts, pretending to have conversation.

Nathan01
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1306917
https://archive.ph/GdCmc

ning_aric
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=205747
http://archive.md/0DDH5


So we have 2 Ann thread bumpers/shillers coming to Zentoshi Ann thread by coincidence?

[allyouracid]

I see. Maybe it's a good thing to start targetting these kinds of practices. Because, not gonna lie, when I read this thread, my initial thought was "who cares.". The reason is probably that these shilling practices have become such a common thing here. When I read a new ANN thread and it has a certain amount of replies in a short period of time, it's already obvious that someone is bumping the thread with useless / paid replies. I'm not insinuating that YankeeRuinX is part of this (I think his explanation is sufficient), but all those newbie accounts which post nonsense in ANN threads maybe shouldn't be taken for granted / accepted as some kind of inventory of the forum.

Would be interesting to automate the search for such accounts. This should be pretty easy. Parse the announcement section for new threads, collect the users posting and create some kind of "pools" of users who commonly post in certain threads. This would give some interesting analysis what kind of spam groups are active in this forum, which users (likely) belong together etc…

Maybe I'll find some time to do this in the near future.

[Yankeeruinx]

Just when I thought this was all over and we could move on.....

For comparison here is our CryptoTalk thread:

https://cryptotalk.org/topic/17069-ann-zentoshi-zenx-launching-november-7th-2019/

Now to me this seems fine but then admittedly I haven't done a deep dive into user accounts and post history of who is posting there.

Now let's say that we did hire some kind of pump group as claimed, then why wouldn't they also be working on the CryptoTalk thread too?

I don't know what's going on with BTT and why things are happening, for all I know one of the accusers has made a bunch of alt accounts and is trying to set us up to get some trust credit or a community member thought they were helping us by making posts, who knows at this point.

What I do know for absolute certainty is no pump group has been hired or paid to make posts on our ANN thread so I feel like all these accusations of being a scam are a little too far and have been extremely damaging to our project. We just launched our testnet which was supposed to be an exciting milestone for us and a chance to show everyone what we have been working on and it is all being muddied by these constant accusations.

First we were accused of having a fake team and using pics stolen off google, we provided social links for everyone on the team who offered them and added them to LinkedIn.

Then we were accused of not being a registered LLC in the US so we provided documents as proof that we were in fact registered.

Then there was the whole T&C issue which has also been resolved.

Now we are left with this mystery hired shill/pump group which conveniently is something we do not have an ability to disprove, at least I have no idea how you can disprove that kind of allegation.

Maybe these attacks/accusations about the project did start off with good intentions to protect the BTT community but at this point it is starting to feel a bit malicious in all honesty.

[JollyGood]

Zentoshi Ann
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5196479.0

Thank you for starting this thread.

There is irrefutable evidence that newbies including one that woke up after over a 2 year gap to make one post between 2017 and 2019. When raising the question about how this happened they claim ignorance.

They do not first read and adhere to the rules of this forum when creating a thread, and these bumping services thrives on this, they offer their services to devs who do not know the forum rules and this is the reason they landed here, it's not only about your project, it's also how you behave here when promoting your project here.

This is a great example to those thinking of hiring paid shills and using sock-puppets to pump threads. Those days are long gone where the fake accounts can push threads back to the top of the listings pages.

Project owners with real honest and genuine businesses that are considering going down the route of hiring sock-puppets to pump their threads with trash posts such as "Nice project, tell me more" and "Wow, looks like a great project with great team" are liable to face scam accusations because if any one part of a business is a scam then there is nothing to stop other parts of the business being scams too.

I would never trust a project. It displays all character of fraud and scam. Employing ANN bumping and shilling services is outright unprofessional and untrustworthy behavior.

Members should keep their eyes peeled and avoid wasting time and resources on such shady projects.

Yes I agree with you. This project is untrustworthy simply on the basis of the hiring of paid shills. They are to blame for taking the conversation away from it being about the project rather than about the integrity of the team.

As for the viability of the project itself, that too sees to be a very weak ideal which cannot succeed and the basis of that is the inexperience and lack of business acumen of the team behind it.

They do not first read and adhere to the rules of this forum when creating a thread

Nope, they don't.  I suspect most of these garbage ICOs don't read or even care that there are rules here.  And frankly it amazes me that these scams (assuming this is one) are still being perpetrated.  That means they have to still be profitable, which means people are still buying these coins, investing money in the projects, and helping them to advertise.  Unbelievable.

I would never trust a project. It displays all character of fraud and scam.

Yep.  ANN bumping is a fairly old practice, and it could be that the project is just being dishonestly aggressive in marketing it--but I doubt it.  My guess is that it is indeed a scam, though I could be completely wrong and I'm not accusing this project of scamming.  That isn't a hard guess, because over 9/10ths of them seem to be, or are proven to be in the end.  Bumping ANN threads incessantly isn't OK though.

Excellent post, thank you The Pharmacist.

The case for it being a scam hence the paid shills and the case for aggressive marketing both can be made here depending on how you see it - I stopped short of calling it scam. Your guess though could be correct because they have pre-mined coins and that immediately casts shadows on the project and the motives behind the owners. Theoretically, they wanted they could dump their coins at any time they wanted to exit without making an announcement so investors will be left with zero value coins, it has happened before with others projects of course.

I think when inevitable questions will be asked the people behind the project must be kind, courteous and helpful at all times. When the social media and promotions manager that will receive payment in tokens for representing and assisting the company (Yankeeruinx) has failed at the first hurdle and posts highly offensive replies and provides the most flimsy of explanations on exactly how an army of sock-puppets posted around 75% of all posts in the first 3 pages of their thread as can be seen here but the post was made without knowing at that time that the full member I listed (Yankeeruinx) was employed by them so the that did not correctly reflect because the paid shills percentage would have risen: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5196479.msg52952920#msg52952920

///////////////////////////////////
- There are a total of 50 posts in this thread excluding my one. Mine is post #51:

- Thread Page 1 posts: OP=5  Newbies=14  Full Member=1
- Thread Page 2 posts: OP=8  Newbies=6    Full Member=2  Member=2   Legendary=2
- Thread Page 3 posts: OP=3  Newbies=3    Full Member=1  Member=1   Hero Member=1  Snr Member=1

Of the posts made in this thread (excluding posts from the thread starter and those questioning its integrity necromastery x1, mine x1 and mosprognoz x1), it is dominated with newbies making around 72% (or 23 out of 32) posts.
///////////////////////////////////

[ZentoshiOfficial]

Zentoshi Ann
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5196479.0

Thank you for starting this thread.

There is irrefutable evidence that newbies including one that woke up after over a 2 year gap to make one post between 2017 and 2019. When raising the question about how this happened they claim ignorance.

They do not first read and adhere to the rules of this forum when creating a thread, and these bumping services thrives on this, they offer their services to devs who do not know the forum rules and this is the reason they landed here, it's not only about your project, it's also how you behave here when promoting your project here.

This is a great example to those thinking of hiring paid shills and using sock-puppets to pump threads. Those days are long gone where the fake accounts can push threads back to the top of the listings pages.

Project owners with real honest and genuine businesses that are considering going down the route of hiring sock-puppets to pump their threads with trash posts such as "Nice project, tell me more" and "Wow, looks like a great project with great team" are liable to face scam accusations because if any one part of a business is a scam then there is nothing to stop other parts of the business being scams too.

I would never trust a project. It displays all character of fraud and scam. Employing ANN bumping and shilling services is outright unprofessional and untrustworthy behavior.

Members should keep their eyes peeled and avoid wasting time and resources on such shady projects.

Yes I agree with you. This project is untrustworthy simply on the basis of the hiring of paid shills. They are to blame for taking the conversation away from it being about the project rather than about the integrity of the team.

As for the viability of the project itself, that too sees to be a very weak ideal which cannot succeed and the basis of that is the inexperience and lack of business acumen of the team behind it.

They do not first read and adhere to the rules of this forum when creating a thread

Nope, they don't.  I suspect most of these garbage ICOs don't read or even care that there are rules here.  And frankly it amazes me that these scams (assuming this is one) are still being perpetrated.  That means they have to still be profitable, which means people are still buying these coins, investing money in the projects, and helping them to advertise.  Unbelievable.

I would never trust a project. It displays all character of fraud and scam.

Yep.  ANN bumping is a fairly old practice, and it could be that the project is just being dishonestly aggressive in marketing it--but I doubt it.  My guess is that it is indeed a scam, though I could be completely wrong and I'm not accusing this project of scamming.  That isn't a hard guess, because over 9/10ths of them seem to be, or are proven to be in the end.  Bumping ANN threads incessantly isn't OK though.

Excellent post, thank you The Pharmacist.

The case for it being a scam hence the paid shills and the case for aggressive marketing both can be made here depending on how you see it - I stopped short of calling it scam. Your guess though could be correct because they have pre-mined coins and that immediately casts shadows on the project and the motives behind the owners. Theoretically, they wanted they could dump their coins at any time they wanted to exit without making an announcement so investors will be left with zero value coins, it has happened before with others projects of course.

I think when inevitable questions will be asked the people behind the project must be kind, courteous and helpful at all times. When the social media and promotions manager that will receive payment in tokens for representing and assisting the company (Yankeeruinx) has failed at the first hurdle and posts highly offensive replies and provides the most flimsy of explanations on exactly how an army of sock-puppets posted around 75% of all posts in the first 3 pages of their thread as can be seen here but the post was made without knowing at that time that the full member I listed (Yankeeruinx) was employed by them so the that did not correctly reflect because the paid shills percentage would have risen: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5196479.msg52952920#msg52952920

///////////////////////////////////
- There are a total of 50 posts in this thread excluding my one. Mine is post #51:

- Thread Page 1 posts: OP=5  Newbies=14  Full Member=1
- Thread Page 2 posts: OP=8  Newbies=6    Full Member=2  Member=2   Legendary=2
- Thread Page 3 posts: OP=3  Newbies=3    Full Member=1  Member=1   Hero Member=1  Snr Member=1

Of the posts made in this thread (excluding posts from the thread starter and those questioning its integrity necromastery x1, mine x1 and mosprognoz x1), it is dominated with newbies making around 72% (or 23 out of 32) posts.
///////////////////////////////////

I dont know how many times we need to say this... but we do not pay for shilling, we have never paid for our thread to be bumped, and you all keep unnecessarily categorizing these newbie accounts as paid shills when in fact they have never been paid for such a service. We did not hire a group to shill, we did not hire individuals to shill, and we never will. We have however promoted to our community to come see us on BitcoinTalk forums, and it is very possible through their excitement they posted with fresh accounts.

We have been collecting community members since 2018, some of which have never been into cryptocurrency before, some of which have no clue how bitcoin works, and some of which just want to help support our cause. We love our community, and we are sorry if they broke a rule (which we DID NOT) by being over zealous in their dialogue and interaction with our thread.

What is funny, is we have had at least 30+ people come to us this week with their shilling services. I haven't woken up one day without an inbox full of them on my discord and telegram. If you guys are truly serious in getting these kinds of services banned from this forum, tell me and I will supply you names because I refuse to pay any of them. We are all about organic growth. Paid shills, paid twitter, paid facebook, etc is not organic and is usually all bots and fake accounts.

We were really hoping to end this, but I can see you have no plans to do so, and our experience with this forum has been nothing but toxic and hostile.

Why does it have to be this way? We are trying to be genuine here and you match that each time with more hostility. There is no reason to attack us in this way, and crypto should not be like this. Crypto culture needs to evolve away from these things, and people need to be more mature. If this non-sense keeps going on across this market, crypto will never grow to its full potential as it scares everyone off.

-Zentoshi