[How to] Detect and recognize projects

[Harlot]

Your “how to” guide wasn't really that organized in a way of what kind of scam are you trying to explain since you have mixed both website scams and ICO scams. Your thread would be better if you organized your guide in a way of separating both your ICO scam project guide and your websit scam guide as it will be much easier to understand for the newbies. Your contwnt and explanation was great but the structure of how you explain it was messy.

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[Rosilito]

It is not easy to know whether a project is a scam or not. Do some research to find out if the team in this project is real, and if they have any kind of palgiarism. But I don't think that's enough. Because those of us who have been involved with crypto since the ico hype of 2017, have seen how ico owners have run away with investors' money. Not all of them were fake teams.

Finding team members whether if they were real or not doesn't guarantee the entire credibility of the project itself. Plagiarims, on the other hand, is very essential point, if you spotted it, you should avoid the project as soon as possible, much better if you'll remind other participants about it.

So, it takes much more than checking teams to successfully avoid scams.

And so I agree with this. Every point that was been discussed in OP is very important. However there were still some necessary stuff you could add upon your investigation  .

[hd49728]

Check their Github activities to see how good old projects are or they simply walking-dead projects.
Altcoin season, scam altcoin projects will appear. Check their Githubs first

When market is bullish, some old but dead projects will try to walk and attract investors attention as well as their capital. Be aware of such dead projects.

[lovesmayfamilis]

Finding team members whether if they were real or not doesn't guarantee the entire credibility of the project itself. Plagiarims, on the other hand, is very essential point, if you spotted it, you should avoid the project as soon as possible, much better if you'll remind other participants about it.

If we talk about whether there is plagiarism of white paper in the project or not, then one rule says a lot. If there is plagiarism, what conclusions can be drawn about the project itself? They are unable to write the document on their own?
There are many investigations on this forum that have been conducted with allegations of plagiarism. And on those projects, there is something like a “stigma”, and they are marked with flags. But what is most surprising is that the developers themselves do not understand their mistake, and over time, after rewriting their document, they demand that the forum acknowledge the honesty of their intentions.

There are some time that finding about the photo if real or not does not help. I hope what happens on 2017 will not repeat, some scammers CEO are not scared to show their faces on social media or even blockchain conferences personally, and some did even get a selfie with well-known crypto individuals and use it to promote their scam projects. My point is, the photo listed on their website is real but they have hidden motives, I never heard one of them go to jail. But finding the photo if real or not will surely minimize any possible financial damages.

If the project is a scam, then there will be no photos of real developers.  They are all afraid to show their identity, hiding behind the fact that anonymity must exist in crypto.
These are either random people who do not suspect that someone is using their photo. Or there may be some really famous people in cryptography who also don't know about the project. And also the photo that the computer generates. Such photos look very natural, an unknowing person can believe in the reality of the photo.

[Leviathan.007]

However, whitepaper can't guarantee anything because there are some writers doing the whitepapers for some money.

This is indeed a fact. I remember joining a signature campaign back then (bounty project) and worked so hard to promote it as it had a nice telegram community and a promising project (wearable crypto-supported watch wallet), and it haven't plagiarized it's whitepaper (I've investigated it) yet in the end for I think 2 months of the campaign, it turned to be a scam saying that they are processing the payments but they didn't. They even kicked everyone out on the telegram and could not be reached at all. Glad I never invested on such projects but I also think that what if other newbies in here did, hence I found this kind of thread very helpful. Though this must also be on the Reputation section, I think this fits here as a tutorial, a warning, and a reminder.

Thanks for the comment Insanerman, The fake whitepaper is unfortunately the worst, because some people will only think if they project have whitepaper it's legit while this can be a trap for the newbies. A few weeks ago I some someone offering that he write whitepapers for money on bitcointalk, in this case I hope to see users report these people and neg trust them.
Regarding to thread movement, I would leave this thread to the forum mods and if they think should they will move the thread to another section.

[LbtalkL]

There are some time that finding about the photo if real or not does not help. I hope what happens on 2017 will not repeat, some scammers CEO are not scared to show their faces on social media or even blockchain conferences personally, and some did even get a selfie with well-known crypto individuals and use it to promote their scam projects. My point is, the photo listed on their website is real but they have hidden motives, I never heard one of them go to jail. But finding the photo if real or not will surely minimize any possible financial damages.

If the project is a scam, then there will be no photos of real developers.  They are all afraid to show their identity, hiding behind the fact that anonymity must exist in crypto.
These are either random people who do not suspect that someone is using their photo. Or there may be some really famous people in cryptography who also don't know about the project. And also the photo that the computer generates. Such photos look very natural, an unknowing person can believe in the reality of the photo.

Yes, there are cases like that but if you join some bounties/ICO last 2017, a lot of scam projects are having real pictures on blockchain conferences, that picture is not stolen, it is the picture of the CEO/founder himself attending on that particular meetup. Some are not just pictures but video footage too and that project is gone now, I lot of people making scam accusation thread about them.

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

are they really upgrading their scammy methods too?
i honestly haven't seen any new method of scamming people for a very long time. it has been the same thing but it gets easier and they keep changing the name of it. for example they were scamming using ICOs and then changed the name to IEO and did the same scam all over again under the new name then changed it a couple of times. and nowadays with the latest name (DeFi) they are scamming all the same.

IEOs are upgrades of failed ICOs. Then projects failed with ICOs and IEOs try to create a new trend, DeFi to get attention of stupid investors and steal capital from them. ICOs are dead for a while. IEOs are still around us. DeFi projects now are seeding everywhere in crypto space. I will wait a few months to see current successful DeFi projects and their coins, tokens fall to 80 or 90 percent.

[Timmzzy]

Here in this the article I'm going to explain about how do I detect and recognize scam projects in crypto market. However, the method they use is usually same, unless a few projects with more creativity.
Let's say by rising the value of the crypto currencies specially back in 2017, many fraudsters started to trap victims and mostly newbies. From beautiful shiny but fake ICO to tempting profits in short-term.

Domain Name
These websites will try to trick into thinking they are official websites of well-known brands (Facebook, Adidas, etc...). While, they have not any relation to the actual company. Also, make sure that the domain name is as it was expected, especially if you are clicking a on link. For example, when you are expecting to enter coinbase.com, you may they redirected into colnbase.com, with exactly the same skin. The only difference is colnbase.com will collect your username/password and for the abusers (Phishing method)

Apparently Flawless and Excellent
This usually happens when you are searching for good online in low prices. For example, when you are going to buy iPhone 11 for $300. 'No discount is unreasonable'. They will try to collect your payment information and maybe you will not even receive any goods at all. Also, I saw this method when a website was trying to sell Bitcoins for $3999 while the real price was more than $5000. If you need any huge and unreasonable discount you will need to double check everything and make sure. Also, the other example for being apparently excellent and tempting is to promising huge profits, try to understand and make sure about how they should provide you the profit.



Check the Documents (even if it's hard to read)
Some exchanges/casinos will put some conditions for the service. For example, you will need to do KYC before the withdraw the they maybe ban your country, or they maybe have a rule about using VPNs. Usually the list of user agreement is super huge with small font but if you re spending you money you need to read the agreement. 'Do not sign anything without reading' by registering the account you are actually signing the user agreement. Also, the other important document is the whitepaper, always read the whitepaper before you even think about investing. However, whitepaper can't guarantee anything because there are some writers doing the whitepapers for some money.

Trustmark
Trustmarks are a method for third-party verification for an online legit business. These licenses are usually for centralized business, if you see crypto related website with governmental trustmarks double check the license. For example, the license was published for 'Henry Investments', now the scammers can create a fake company with this name and abuse the trustmark, or they can easily change the name using Photoshop.

Check the Domain
Using the websites like https://who.is you can check the domain information about the website, domains registered for short periods of time are suspicious domains. Because the scammers will usually run the website for short periods of time with small amount of money.
Also, check the other websites registered on the server, usually the buy one server and run multiple scam websites on it.



Reviews
Never ever trust the comments and reviews on social media and trustrating websites. Many project will pay some small money to people in order to send some positive reviews for them, they even give them some payment proof screenshots to broadcast in public.

Team Members
This is a a very known method when scammers take some photo from random people from social media and put in their website. A simple image search can be useful here.

Thank you for your attention.

Even with all this analysis a project that will fail will fail a project that will do good will do good, have encountered many that with all hopes and fake promises as at when they are to start never come through. To be I just believe its with the grace of God that many get lucky.

[celemoore]

Some scammers have grown and have evolved. They now have a non-plagiarized whitepaper, an attractive website, convincing usecases. Infact, they can look so real with high scores on review sites, they can get a popular crypto youtuber to shill their project. They pay professionals to do the convincing part just to get fund.

They will even have real team members with legit physical office address. They have evolved hence you can't be 100% sure. You can do your best by checking all necessary loopholes and hope they succeed. Crypto space is a gamble

[carlisle1]

Check their Github activities to see how good old projects are or they simply walking-dead projects.
Altcoin season, scam altcoin projects will appear. Check their Githubs first

This is crucial in time like this, investors needs to check every information in order not be trapped to this kind of projects.

A lots of this types of activities will start showing as developers who are good in running away will be awaken, knowing that good opportunities are there again for them to scam uncareful investors.

When market is bullish, some old but dead projects will try to walk and attract investors attention as well as their capital. Be aware of such dead projects.

There's possibilities that developers or whales who can manage to manipulates those old coins will pumped it up to attract traders, unknowingly, this action will only tricked them and just sucked their money.

[plvbob0070]

A lot of guidelines have been shared in this forum. Unfortunately, scammers are also upgrading their strategies in order to fool people. In fact, we can`t easily differentiate the genuine projects from a fake one. It should undergo into a deep research for us to know how a project really serious.

I don`t know how we can eradicate this problem in crypto space. But I think educating our own selves is enough to avoid scam projects. Besides, learning from the past is enough already to lessen people who easily bait by flowering words of fake projects.

It is precisely the reason why finding details concerning the project needs to be studied because it is not vague, they will use data from different projects just to make their project reliable in the eyes of investors. Furthermore, even the white paper should not be immediately trusted, it needs to be evaluated in detail to figure out if the said information is factual. Hence, it is a must to distinguish the various forms of how we can easily spot scams to be alert and protect ourselves because some of it is a trap and some represent a window of opportunity.

[AakZaki]

The use of a domain name that is almost the same as the original domain is a phishing method that is currently widely used. even many are trapped and enter the private key on the phishing website, so the wallet will be controlled by scammers with a private key that has been entered on the phishing website. this must be completely avoided. The best way to avoid this is to check the website name if it is correct. if you need to note and remember the original domain name. Bookmarking also helps, but it still needs to be checked manually to make sure it stays safe.

[masulum]

Even with all this analysis a project that will fail will fail a project that will do good will do good, have encountered many that with all hopes and fake promises as at when they are to start never come through. To be I just believe its with the grace of God that many get lucky.

Of course, all of us believe in God and luck. However, in a business context this is not the case. What was mentioned by the OP is, we are advised to research every project found. so we are not just to waste too much money on a project that looks good but turns out to be just a fraud in the end. Indeed it is your money, maybe $1000 or even $100,000 is not a lot of money for you. However, for some people, especially beginners with a low economy, the $100 that has been invested can be very valuable to meet their food needs. Rather than the money given free to scammers, isn't it better if we do various kinds of research for investment in crypto as suggested by the OP? Although it does not save 100%, at least you can be free of scammers of at least 50%. Sure, good project will be good but if you don't make a research first how you know if it will be good? Do you think will asking to the god?