FuelEV and Estate DAO SNSs suspicious purchases via Coinbase

Developers Getting Started
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All of the purchases in FuelEV and EstateDAO had the same pattern. 30 or so fake accounts that all went

Coinbase Hot Wallet → Address → Sale.

Other than my address that is because I’m an idiot and invested in both.

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It’s too hard to check all of them right now, I have Dragginz work to do. Anybody want to do some detective work. I think Internet Computer Explorer is the same to be honest.

George Bassadone, Tina Rohner and DOLR AI should be kicked off the network. Ok, not really, that goes against the principles of decentralisation. Just punished enough that there is no financial incentive to continue draining the IC.

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Wow, the corruption really runs deep here.

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I give this 20 seconds before it’s hidden by Wenzel’s “community”

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Lots of vampires in icp.

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This is actually crazy :confused:

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We have to fight against the corruption here and make sure it doesn’t continue to spread.

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Well at least we won’t be funding it anymore hah… every cloud… So glad we supported a website that lists a single non-existent property and a single car… If only there was a way for legitimate projects that need funding to get backing.

Someone should create that…

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It’s called the SNS with some changes and more scrutiny/due diligence.

Hopefully a mandatory liquidity pool too… @rem.codes

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Fomowell follows the same pattern.

The community fund should only be allowed for established project with a live product + actual users.

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That’s going to be an option for toolkit projects where a percentage is reserved for this

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Hello, I can’t say much about FuelEV and Estate DAO yet (I mean facts) because I decided to start by identifying who is who.

What I found interesting: the guys from HotOrNot acted unfairly towards their own DAO even during the SNS sale stage.

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Details:

On July 12, 2023, at 02:18 PM UTC, user rishichadha30 posted a message with a screenshot showing:

Current Overall Commitment = 913,493.67 ICP
Deadline: 17 hours, 47 minutes

On July 12, 2023, at 04:40 PM, 04:44 PM, and 05:04 PM (UTC), the HotOrNot team made transfers from their wallet totaling 60,200 ICP and became participants in their own sale.

On July 12, 2023, at 05:29 PM (UTC), user FranHefner posted a screenshot showing:

Current Overall Commitment = 1,015,923.27 ICP
Deadline: 14 hours, 31 minutes

My initial thoughts: On the final day of the SNS sale, in order to reach the minimum ICP amount required for the SNS launch to proceed (note that HoR set the Minimum Commitment Goal at 1 million ICP), they helped themselves. These 60,200 ICP were deposited into the HotOrNot wallet in parts, from Binance, starting around July 1, 2023.

As a result, the team gained additional tokens, reached the Minimum Commitment Goal, and later reclaimed their own ICP tokens, which they had spent during the SNS sale (half of the treasury is already empty, to be honest).

Details are here. I’ll gradually unravel this tangled mess and update the table (when I have time for it).

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Thank you for flagging that Adam, we actually gave them the benefit of the doubt when all this started earlier, but definitely worth checking it out now.

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I’m curious about the proposed removal process from the network. Are you suggesting using the NNS to forcibly remove their canisters? Even if the allegations are true, I question whether we have that capability - or should exercise it even if we do. This is a decentralized network, and arbitrarily removing project canisters would send a concerning message to the crypto community about IC’s centralization.

I hope we don’t go down that path. Instead, I’d prefer to see more thorough education and investigation to conclusively prove if a project is malicious. Let the community evaluate the evidence and decide whether to continue supporting these projects. I trust the community’s wisdom to make the right choice, but that’s just my perspective on this.

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are you for… oh sorry

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@borovan @Forreal @wpb @saikatdas0790

I don’t think anyone is suggesting anything other than the future non support of this development team from the community. And we need to rethink the way the neurons fund works because teams can fund projects with their own money to gain contribution from the neurons fund, giving them all the voting power and ability to rug the NF treasury.

They didn’t technically break any rules but they gamed the system. We need to shore up the system so that this can’t continue.

In case you have any doubts about this teams intentions for investor money: this team is responsible for:

knottytales.com → 60k seed round (its a static website for a single photographer)

VR1.ai → undisclosed seed round (its literally a wordpress filled with placeholder junk)

hotorNot/YRAL/DOLR → 1 million ICP, ive tried it, its just a looping reel of videos. I have a hard time believe this app has real users.

EstateDAO-> 135K ICP, 65K from the NF, → 1 apartment listed, the apartment cant be found in map search engines.

FuelEV-> 200kk ICP, 88k from the NF → 1 car, business dashboard stopped updating the seconds they SNS launched.

This team has extracted enough value from the community. anyone associated with them ought to be scrutinized by dfinity.

who am I? I’m a hobbyist / part time dev who loves ICP. Ive been lurking in these forums long before I made an account and i saw all this crap unfold. I kept my mouth closed because I didnt think it was harming the ecosystem, after all I didn’t invest in any of these projects. If someone else wants to what harm would it do? but I see that was wrong. The neurons fund allows these guys to put up their own money to get those funds. and they are just Speed running SNS launches to extract value. It’s a bad look for the whole community.

If there are node providers who are doing business with this development team, those node providers ought to be looked into. that is just common sense. Adam’s personal feelings are irrelevant to the conversation.

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Was only able to read this now. Thanks @Vibhor for pointing this out to me :folded_hands:

First, would like to recall there is an “open guidelines” explaining how Dfinity is voting (or abstaining):

It already has a section saying:

Project Maturity

[Amendment November 14th 2024]

It is generally recommended that projects aiming to launch with SNS have a working product, demonstrated product-market fit, and some level of community traction.

But how “strict” that is being applied, on cases of NF request projects, has been perhaps too “relaxed”, and agree the NF could have been “gamed”. :confused:

Dfinity and Synapse Vote (and CodeGov follows it) voting philosophy has been more like:
“As long as the project has meaningful code on the IC, let the governance proposal pass and let the Investors be the ultimate deciders.”

So in a nutshell, what I feel is the real problem, is the “mixing” of approving a Neuron Fund commitment from the approving of an SNS to be formed. They are different things and this would only be fully solved if they are separated.

I think they have kept it simple for as long as they could, but feel eventually this would need to evolve into something like:
Proposal:

  • If on SNS config, it has “neuron_fund”: true,
  • then immediately after the SNS is approved, create a new proposal, with topic “neuron_fund” (topic to be created)
  • and depending on it’s approval / rejection, the fund would commit.

It’s just a small step, but can make all the difference. After this is implemented, Dfinity, Synapse Vote and other Known Neurons that would like to specialize on that topic, they can vote specifically if they believe it’s a good investment or not for Neuron Fund.

Tagging @bjoernek, @lara and @aterga as relevant people for this idea.

Thanks all and looking forward for feedback :folded_hands:

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