How can a coin get "bought out"?

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I used to follow PoS coins a lot back when they didn't have these silly little DAOs that centralize what's supposed to be centralized and stakers only had to keep their wallets running in order to stake instead of having to delegate to those with more wealth.  One of those coins from back in the day was Neblio (Heard of it?  Anyone?).

For shits & giggles I visited Neblio's CMC page and then took a stroll over to its Reddit page, where I found this comment in the second-to-most recent thread:



Nobody in that thread elaborated on what was said about Neblio's team selling the coin to some sort of pump and dump team, but I just can't figure out how that would work.  Sure, the owners of the website could sell the domain name and the site's code but that wouldn't prevent a community from continuing to maintain the blockchain, right?  Can anyone provide some insight as to what might have happened or if the above quote could somehow be true?

Another coin I used to follow was Bitcash, even though it was never a PoS coin.  Now, if you click on the link to the website from the CMC page it takes you to some bizarre website, and it's obvious in this case that either the site was sold or the original owners just straight-up changed it to something completely different.  Oddly enough, it looks as though the blockchain is still going even though nobody is mining it...?  Kind of the same thing with Sinovate; nobody is mining it but it's being reported that people are still staking it.

Anyway, input is welcome.  Shitposts are not.

[Hazink]

There is no open or legal way that I have seen that has been used to buy off an entire coin from the community aside from the unofficial way, which is based on an agreement between the project owners and an organisation of interest.
 
Which the company will hand over the majority of the coin/token allocation to them to decide what ever will happen to it, and such a deal is always with companies that are into pump and dump, as it's good for their business. With the majority of the coin under their control, it's easier for them to manipulate the price.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

There is no open or legal way that I have seen that has been used to buy off an entire coin from the community aside from the unofficial way, which is based on an agreement between the project owners and an organisation of interest.
 
Which the company will hand over the majority of the coin/token allocation to them to decide what ever will happen to it, and such a deal is always with companies that are into pump and dump, as it's good for their business. With the majority of the coin under their control, it's easier for them to manipulate the price.

So if I understand you correctly, the developers (or even big whales) would be able to sell the coin, whatever that really means?  I still don't understand how having a bunch of a certain coin would give someone the power to sell it as if it were a company, because it isn't.  Neblio's blockchain is/was maintained by the stakers, and assuming there were enough of them to decentralize the security of it, how could somebody take control of it?  I'd imagine if there was resistance by the community there would be a fork of some kind.

In any case, all of this makes me even more suspicious of coins where part of the block reward goes to the devs or a "community fund".

[d5000]

Nobody in that thread elaborated on what was said about Neblio's team selling the coin to some sort of pump and dump team, but I just can't figure out how that would work.  Sure, the owners of the website could sell the domain name and the site's code but that wouldn't prevent a community from continuing to maintain the blockchain, right?

I think in the typical "altcoin jargon", "selling the coin" means only to sell the website/domain/social media accounts, (if they exist) proprietary parts of the code and in addition mined/staked and premined coins.

The problem is that, above all, heavily premined coins are so dependant on their "team" that if the team disappears they often "die" too, i.e. mining and staking almost stops. If the pump&dump group "extracted" the last rest of profit and then left for good, then the coin's price could have fallen so deep that most miners and stakers left it too. And a real "community", or people worried about development and general "wellbeing" of the coin, often in these stages doesn't exist anymore.

I don't know about the particular situation of Neblio though. I'm somewhat following some near-dead coins, and the community involvement is so low that if 2 or 3 members left then the whole coin would probably collapse (i.e. stakers/miners leaving) in few months, even in the case of non-premined coins.

Regarding Bitcash:

Oddly enough, it looks as though the blockchain is still going even though nobody is mining it...?  

I don't know if it was the case when you opened the thread, but I see currently a single mining pool on that site (monminepool.org). So if they mine at least sometimes, the blockchain advances ...

[markm]

One hears it said in HIVE backstory that Justin Sun "bought" STEEM or STEEMIT or both, as that was apparently the impetus behind the "forking" of that project to "hive off" of it the HIVE platform.

Reviewing that history might shed light; I get the impression that if the target to be aquired is a proof of stake platform buying up enough stake might suffice to be perceived as having "bought" the thing.

-MarkM-

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I think in the typical "altcoin jargon", "selling the coin" means only to sell the website/domain/social media accounts, (if they exist) proprietary parts of the code and in addition mined/staked and premined coins.

That certainly seems to be the case with Neblio, which is why it's so glaringly obvious that any coin that has some type of governance or leadership (not just people trying to improve its protocol) is a risk that's just not worth taking--especially nowadays when every altcoin's site looks basically the same and touts the same advantages. For example:











And so forth.

The problem is that, above all, heavily premined coins are so dependant on their "team" that if the team disappears they often "die" too, i.e. mining and staking almost stops. If the pump&dump group "extracted" the last rest of profit and then left for good, then the coin's price could have fallen so deep that most miners and stakers left it too.

Why couldn't the coin live on without a team?  Does there always need to be constant development for something as simple as Neblio was?  One of the last changes they made or tried to make was implementing those goddamn governance proposals and voting crap.  Before that it was [buy coins]-->[keep wallet running]-->[stake coins].

Regarding Bitcash:

I don't know if it was the case when you opened the thread, but I see currently a single mining pool on that site (monminepool.org). So if they mine at least sometimes, the blockchain advances ...

One miner using that pool, eh?  I just don't know if that's legit or not.  The coin does trade on some exchanges like TradeOgre, but it's deader than dead as far as I can see.

[d5000]

Why couldn't the coin live on without a team?  Does there always need to be constant development for something as simple as Neblio was?

At least some minimal development is also required to keep the coin usable. I'm for example following a coin which was created in 2014 (Slimcoin/SLM), and saw some code updates in 2019/20, but then got stalled again. It's a relatively close Bitcoin fork but with some block structure changes which make an upgrading with new Bitcoin code not completely trivial.

The problem that emerged now is that it is not longer compatible with modern versions of the Boost library. This will lead to the undesirable consequence that every new user needs to either install an old Boost version (which is not very newbie-friendly) or use a pre-compiled binary, which is of course a security risk.

Such "hiccups" will become increasingly problematic once the coin gets older and older. So at least a minimal development activity is needed to help the coin staying alive. It will probably not die directly but simply "wane away".

If the coin always was decentralized and had a bunch of enthusiasts maintaining it at least minimally (what even small coins can achieve, like NMC or PPC), then it's likely the coin can survive the long term as there is always this "community" feeling, not that you're using a "product" from a "business" like it's the case with premined coins.

One miner using that pool, eh?  I just don't know if that's legit or not.  The coin does trade on some exchanges like TradeOgre, but it's deader than dead as far as I can see.

Both Neblio and Bitcash seem not totally dead, Bitcash being a bit closer to die, but the blockchains are still "advancing". They probably aren't solving the double spending problem in a satisfying way anymore as they could be probably easily attacked. Maybe that could be considered a requirement for a coin to be "alive" -- to be (reasonably) safe against attacks?