In this post, I aim to shed light on some worrying developments at ICP Swap, which I feel need immediate attention from our community. I believe we should maintain an open dialogue about such occurrences to protect our investments and the integrity of the crypto market. As members of this community, it’s crucial that we hold all platforms to a high standard and scrutinize their operations. It seems that some practices undertaken by ICP Swap raise some serious questions that need to be addressed.
To set the context, ICP Swap operates as a permissioned platform. What this means is that token creators cannot add tokens without explicit approval from the developers. It’s quite clear that the developers are directly involved in what is included on the platform. Hence, the argument that token creators are independently adding tokens without oversight simply does not hold.
Adding to the uncertainty, the founders of ICP Swap remain anonymous. Although there’s no direct evidence, I have strong suspicions (99.9% sure) that Dfinity, is funding ICP Swap.
In recent events, ICP Swap has added several new meme tokens to their platform and, furthermore, created liquidity pools for these tokens. This action might look innocent at first glance, but it can potentially mislead investors into buying these tokens, which may not hold long-term value. Increasing the Total Value Locked (TVL) is generally a positive indicator for a DeFi platform, but it becomes questionable when the increase is achieved by adding potentially dubious tokens. While such practices may be commonplace in established chains like Ethereum, they can be detrimental for a nascent chain like ICP. Boosting TVL with low-value tokens not only compromises the integrity of the platform, but it can also damage the reputation of the entire ecosystem.
ICP Swap recently added a meme token that, on the face of it, seems to present dubious calculations: specifically, 365 ICP tokens against a trillion of the new tokens. I think this is a red flag that investors need to be aware of when considering this token.
Adding to the list of concerns, ICP Swap has also set up a liquidity pool for the GHOST token in both EXT and ICRC formats. This is a 1:1 mint, meaning one GHOST (EXT) token can be exchanged for one GHOST (ICRC) token. Instead of displaying this as a simple minting process, ICP Swap has chosen to depict it as transactions and Total Value Locked. This manipulation seems to be a tactic to inflate their statistics and attract more users to the platform.
Given these circumstances, I am led to believe that ICP Swap may not be operating with the best interests of its users at heart. This conclusion is reinforced by the fact that the GHOST token team chose ICP Swap as their platform - a decision that suggests possible collusion between the two entities.
The implication of these practices is significant: it suggests that ICP Swap could be operating with questionable motives, and that investors should be extremely cautious when considering whether to provide liquidity on the platform.
I therefore urge all community members to carefully reconsider their positions and potentially remove their liquidity from ICP Swap to safeguard their assets. While I am not alleging absolute fraud, I believe the warning signs are clear enough to warrant extreme caution. As always, the decision is ultimately yours. Please stay informed, stay vigilant, and keep questioning.