I would like answers on that

[andvgal]

Just my two cents from the person who started raising the concerns.

Re network stability:

1. Every team member knows that I have written a farewell on Mar 19 and it was there for half a day until it got removed when "someone" woke up. Tech teams knows that I announced the decision on Mar 05, the week before Gen 3 migration.
2. In the farewell, I've told that I step down, but would be available for an advise if needed. Energi Core were consulting to me until my article on Apr 13/14.
3. The exchanges were expected to have wallets closed for 1 week only.
4. Exchanges got order to close deposits on Mar 06. Right before that, large amounts from Treasury got deposited to exchanges as shown before. Overall exchange wallets got bloated dramatically.
5. Migration happened on Mar 10, the majority of coins migrated until Mar 15 iirc, possible scammers like Bashful were stopped, exchanges where expected to open deposits on Mar 17 latest (it can be seen in announcements).
6. Then, exchanges were ordered to only open withdrawals, but keep deposits closed. I could not get explanations for that.
7. When I was leaving, the network was stable - fact, the deposits where overdue to open for 4 days compared to withdrawals.
8. If there would be even a slight known uncontrolled technical issue, I would know about that at that moment and would not leave that early.
9. The CoinFabric must be able to confirm that we started negotiations on audit in Aug 2019 (!), but Energi leadership overtook that and assured me that the audit was handled. Therefore, I can assume that "someone" could know about possible security issues in advance to use that for an excuse.


Re security issues:

1. No one from Energi has told me anything about possible security problems except the "nothing at stake" problem, but I have found a few of them later and even reported to Energi immediately.
2. The "nothing at stake" problem was mitigated in Gen 2 as part of DoS protection. The same protection was introduced into Gen 3 with some tweaks and improvements. So, it was a poor excuse to have deposits closed.
3. They disabled DoS protection in v3.0.4/v3.0.5 even with my immediate protests. After 18 days, they restored everything in v3.0.6 and called that an accomplishment.
4. I admit, that I have recently found a bug I introduced in very early proof-of-concept code, before even talking to CoinFabric, but that does not give an opportunity of account draining and affects only coins at migration (not a problem for users now). That also has an elegant quick and non-hardfork solution to mitigate.
5. I have found possible large staker "run-away" problem in connection with target of Difficulty 1 and a number of other minor issues, all reported and available as code: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4912743.msg54285537#msg54285537 . PoS difficulty+time model may need some revision though.
6. The "run-away" problem does not apply to exchanges, unless they do staking, but a solution to bail out miner has been provided already.
7. There was a partial consensus smart contract call reversion done from about Apr 07 when Energi Core forcibly rebuilt a chain overriding 500+ blocks from a valid main chain. It was caused by an infinite loop which would not get triggered on a live chain. It affected only Masternode payouts, not critical for deposits.
8. I've also found a possible narrow place where "address().send()" and "address().transfer()" are used what can be used as a sort of DoS vector: potentially, gas can be recovered in target contracts through freeing of storage memory what can be used to bump EVM memory usage and/or stack depth to cause reversion inside the consensus contract. That does not allow to steal funds though and could be easily and quickly mitigated, e.g. forbid targets with non-empty code.
9. There is also a theoretical way to do stake mining after a block gap of 1h to build a stronger total work chain, but it's not exploitable on a live chain. There is old fork DoS protection well described in the SRS, the one Energi Core disabled in v3.0.4.
10. The network staking entropy was heavily affected by 1k MN collateral and auto-collateralization feature. That was affecting the pace of block generation. Partially, it seems that the originally chosen difficulty change algorithm has too large coefficients and I would tune that. However, the ballast staking was compensating the problem pretty well.
11. There is a known tricky bug with Merkle/Patricia tree state due to non-determinism of some operations which get triggered under some conditions on some old forks, but that prevents some large reorgs while the main chain continues to work.
12. The large "reorg" problem is not a problem itself (Proof-of-Stake needs to know state in previous blocks to verify headers), stalled forks and dynamic checkpoints are assumed to stop weak chains and force fallback to chain downloader instead of individual block retrieval. "PoS state error" message is not an error in that case at all, it was left just to visualize such cases.
13. Can there be other problems? Of course, it is a complex software, it must have bugs. Why the chain was rebuilt on Apr 06/07? From what I have heard until Apr 13, I understand that it was a terrible mistake of choosing a badly side-chained Treasury staking node as reference for dynamic checkpoint creation instead of the proper main chain. I have not heard anything about security breaches because Energi Core was still consulting to me almost until the time I wrote my article about Crypto Gen 3. Nodes left on the proper chain were staking with no problems AFAIK. If there would be a demo of a security issue then why it was not done in the testnet instead? If a real attack then what would be the point as the last exchange closed its deposits on Apr 03?
14. The main security issue is that Tommy and Ryan can drain ANY account they want and excuse that with "Masternode owner voting", and they can override blockchain causing double spend attacks, and they can change the dynamic consensus at any time with no voting. Their excuse is the same as if local gang in town would decide who's next property to take by a 20% of quorum. There are reasons why absolute monarchies passed away, and why we have separation of concerns in state governance. There is a reason why it is a crime to take functions of any authority.

Re project itself:

Everyone long enough in the business understands quite well that it is a modified Ponzi scheme, but only people blind with hope of future income shutdown their minds. Masternodes stopped attracting "investors" (or "victims" correctly) due to the price barrier and general economical situation. So, MN collateral got decreased to 1k with phony voting done afterwards, but even that is not enough. That's why a derivative bubble exchange is going to be built. I won't even start about the phony charity - it would be offtopic noise. After the first Earndrop in 2018, the coins where bought out and later sold during artificial crazy market prices of 2019 - I know that for sure from the main actor . Possibly quite the same happens with the last Earndrop dump of Q4'19/Q1'20 at price of a little above 1$ and now re-sold at 3+$, but they are a bit more smart the second time - they possibly left less traces in blockchain and kept funds obfuscated in exchanges. Before the Earndrop dumps, the price was apparently decreased with Treasury & personal coin dumps in Q4'19.

The total emission of NRG is about 28,500,000, and they state that a dump of the recovered 200,000 NRG, less than 1%, would seriously hurt other coin owners... As in any other pyramid. The real value of Energi is 0$, but it is common for most cryptos though. Obviously, it is one of the reasons they have blocked additional 93+k of coins which I could control - they were scary of me dumping those. I contacted only a single exchange with request for delisting based on its own rules to get a material evidence to connect trolls to Energi Core, and only after Energi Core had shown self being dangerous to any coin owner. Energi Core lies even in that.

Energi head-hunted me back in 2018, and I literally told them: "I do not believe in crypto, neither I believe in fiat". When I started to contribute into Energi Cryptocurrency (no contracts, except of verbal agreements, "Energi Core Ltd" not even existing), I was too focused on technical aspects until I learned what was Earndrop last Summer when I had to deal with its technical issues and not reported GDPR data breaches. Earndrop shows very well the totalitarian social media marketing sect with a hyper-narcissistic leader associating self with the King, Cyrus the Great. I was ready to leave Energi immediately and only my professional interest to complete the started project (Energi Gen 3) and an opportunity of building another team from scratch was stopping me. Energi has moved release date 3 times (Q3'19, Q4'19, Feb'20) in the Roadmap without even preparing Marketing or Support resources for each deadline. They just put those by pointing a finger into the sky - apparently, they knew they will move the release after the last Earndrop dump settles to re-sell coins at higher prices during closed deposits. Software readiness has never interested them. It seems, they have not even done external audit, but claimed to have that handler. I remind that Beta testing started in Aug 2019.

At the same time, you can see how Energi trolls talk to themselves with an obvious impersonation of me in the main Energi thread. This alone, is enough to understand the moral and methods of Energi leaders. So, the "deposit scam" aligns to that with no doubt.


P.S. In post-Soviet countries, we've seen enough of pyramids in 90's. No pyramid can last forever, it either collapses or transforms through a process when the majority of "investors" loses everything. Then everything starts again. This smaller scale pyramid can destroy the future of many families who make self victims by "investing" into the scheme. Unlike other coins, they constantly lie and shill with sarcastic mocking "love to the World". I've uncovered the true maniacal face of their leader during the last call with him, he literally told me: "Yes, I am a maniac" when he was threatening me, and the blocked coins prove that pretty well .

[Holukai]

Hello everyone,

Regarding the post above, you can find the actual legal response from Energi Core (EnergiCrypto here) posted here - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4912743.msg54292046#msg54292046 - but I will quote it as well.

STATEMENT FROM ENERGI CORE

While Energi Core continues to be a workplace that respects and protects people's fundamental rights and privacy, Energi has decided to make a public statement in response to publicly disseminated false accusations from a disgruntled and troubled former team member.

Andrey Galkin has publicly posted a series of false claims and allegations about Energi alongside bizarre and unreasonable demands. These claims include that Andrey is the creator of Energi Gen 3, that Energi is keeping exchange deposits closed without a valid reason, that Energi is a scam, that Energi should halt the blockchain, and others. Energi Core unequivocally and absolutely refutes these claims. These are the claims of a former team member whose engagement with Energi Core was terminated after multiple disciplinary actions. Energi Core considers it to be self-evident that Andrey has made these claims for the sole purpose of doing harm to Energi Core and the Energi Community.

In a peculiar show of instability, Andrey has publicly declared that contracts which he signed do not apply to him. Though Andrey has re-written much of the code for Energi Gen 3, perhaps in some plan to later make these fraudulent claims of ownership, work on Energi Gen 3 started long before Andrey was even involved. Energi Gen 3 was and continues to be produced as a collaborative effort of work from many Energi Core team members. All intellectual property rights for these designs as well as code produced under a working agreement with Energi Core are exclusively assigned to Energi Core.

These claims are very revealing about Andrey's character and publicly show issues similar to those Energi Core faced while working with him. Energi Core terminated Andrey's working agreement as a result of repeated misconduct against other Energi Core team members and a reckless attitude toward development that puts the entire Energi community at risk. While we are working hard to solve bugs in code Andrey wrote, it is of the utmost importance that we approach development in a way that provides the maximum protection to our users. To this end please reference this article which explains in detail why we have exchange deposits closed: https://medium.com/energi/important-update-exchange-deposits-8aad7a120b3e. The Energi Core development team has been working overtime to definitively solve these issues so exchanges may safely re-open as soon as possible.

During the same time that Energi is working hard to resolve these issues, Andrey is attacking the project in any avenue he finds, such as e-mailing exchanges asking them to de-list us, demanding that we halt the blockchain, and other hyperbolic demands which it is explicitly clear are designed solely to harm Energi and Energi users. This has put a strain on our resources as we are forced to respond to damaging claims. While we are working hard on solutions, Andrey has created multiple fake accounts with which to respond to similarly fake posts. Perhaps worst of all this is not merely trolling - Andrey is openly communicating with Bashful, a wanted criminal in multiple jurisdictions and one of the largest scammers in the cryptocurrency space. We have offered a bounty for information leading to the arrest of "Bashful", as he is a major threat who has already caused significant damages to Energi users.

Energi Gen 3 has some of the most forward thinking and advanced features of any blockchain. These include a powerful self governance mechanism that we have fully described in this article: https://medium.com/energi/how-were-putting-security-at-the-heart-of-energi-6c6dd463a818. Self-governance affords Energi stakeholders the capability to protect each other. This eliminates the need for traditional processes, including time-consuming court orders, even when a malicious actor steals victims' funds. Self-governance allows Energi to directly target malicious actors and that is EXACTLY what was done in the scenario Andrey shared. Again, his short-term thinking is not aligned with our long-term strategic vision, and this is now resulting in one-sided, self-serving claims.

At Energi we treasure our values: we take a strong stance against scammers, hackers, and other malicious actors and will always strive to provide the best for our community and users. Energi was founded out of love, and we are very proud of our accomplishments. We have conducted the most successful airdrop in the history of cryptocurrency giving away over $6.5 MILLION DOLLARS worth of Energi to real users. We have a self-funded philanthropy initiative called Energi Impact dedicated to doing good in the world. We have consistently met our roadmap goals and we have succeeded where many have failed. Energi was created to make the world a better place, and we have a long history of making good on our mission one step at a time - and we will continue to do so. Our values are expressed clearly on the "Join Our Team" page found here https://www.energi.world/join-our-team/. It is quite obvious from the posts made by Andrey that his values are not in alignment with our own.

Let us make it abundantly clear that we do not intend to allow anyone to harm the project or its users in any way, which is why we have decided to make this statement. We will exhaust all legal remedies to protect our users from malevolent actors. We as a company wish to make a clear and unambiguous statement that there is no substance to any of the allegations posted. The posts themselves constitute civil and criminal violations under US and EU law.

The Energi Legal Team is currently reviewing the best options for defense, including civil and criminal action. Energi is committed to the protection of our community and will zealously enforce all rights and remedies in this regard.

Immediately after his post on the Energi Bitcoin Talk thread, brand new accounts were created show "support" for him and attack Energi. 2 of these accounts are the original creator of this thread (Hastaguy) and Selicio, both of which are assumed to be either Andrey and/or Bashful/Ziggy. The thread here was created originally to look for support from other users. When the users here did not support this fake account in trying to push Energi as a scam, he turned to the andvgal account to post looking for the same effect. This is why I have come here to post this. He hasn't gotten the support for his false claims in our thread so has moved to other threads to try again.

I will also add that when it comes to the reduction in masternode collateral that was voted on and passed, Andrey was fully aware of the intention for this (he had it already changed during the Gen 3 public testing phase) and he is also aware that the reason for the reduction is to open the masternodes up to more people. Currently a 10k NRG masternode would be approximately $32 000 USD. The new 1k masternodes would be $3 200 USD. This increases decentralization and allows more people to participate in the voting process.

Regarding the 200 000 NRG recovered, Andrey likes to point out about the total emissions but also fails to mention that over half of the emissions are in masternodes. Additionally, there is large mounts in staking as well. None of this is locked in but the majority will likely stay in those two places (masternode collateral totals have been increasing since Gen 3 launch). For simple math, 28 500 000 - 15 000 000 (masternode collateral) = 13 500 000. So we are down to 13.5 million NRG before we even consider staking, wallets that have been lost and coins currently on Cryptopia as well as other third party services not upgraded to Gen 3. He does like to make the point that 200 000 NRG vs 28.5 million is a small portion but this is not accurate. If all 28.5 million NRG was on exchanges this would be but, as usual, he is using a part truth along with a blatant lie to try to get support.

His entire intent is to attack Energi. The proof is quite visible in the fact that all of these allegations that he is making now, if legitimate, should have been made after he was no longer with the company (or sooner since he was the lead tech who helped code some of these features in). He decided to wait until Energi's 2nd "Birthday", during our celebrations with our community on Discord, to start his attack (using yet another fake account to try and push his false information filled Medium post). This was over a month after the Gen 3 launch so why the delay with all of these allegations since they are obviously very severe and he had advanced notice of the majority of them? Pure negligence or timing an attack?

One last thing before I go. His last sentence claims Tommy is a maniac and his frozen coins prove this. How exactly does one equal the other? Just another allegation made that really makes no sense. His "proof" has no connection to his allegation. How does locking the coins of an ex-employee who has already violated signed contracts (and is likely to continue to break the law this way, Just FYI, Energi team member's agree to hold coins for 18 months from the time they are received), mean that someone is a maniac?

[slaman29]

From my point of view the team does not want investor to feel like it's dumping project which might have adverse effect on the price which they will inturn gain nothing. So they heard to play their card very well for the betterment or success of the projects.
Though only the manager and the team can have accurate answer. Every other will be assumption

Well, every assumption can and should be made that the team and managers only have the company interests in mind, in which case maximum profit at expense of everyone else.

Bear in mind most managers are very dictatorial. "Team members" rarely know what it's all about.

[Janus101]

The dev team must have proof to support their claim 'investor safety' when decide to close down trading on the exchange. If there is a hack, vulnerable or maybe just exchange have a problem on their end and deposit and withdraw must closed, I think it's totally understandable. If not, users, traders of that coin should apply pressure toward exchange to make sure everything is transparent. In the end, there must be trust between both parties to moving forward, defuse the problem.