ICPHub Fake Livestream Views?

General
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Hey everyone, I’m an ICP user and flew to Zurich for WCS2025 — amazing experience overall. Huge props to DFINITY for how they’re running things.

But I saw something that left a bad taste. When I checked X during the event, I noticed @ICPHubs had 80–90k live viewers on their livestream… and honestly, I was shocked.

This isn’t meant as FUD, but let’s be real:

They have 102k followers, their average post gets 1–2k views — how does that suddenly turn into 90k people watching live?

Let’s break it down:

The X post promoting the livestream had 120k views, but only ~300 likes.

Even if we assume 90k people clicked and joined live (which is already a stretch), how is that kind of engagement even remotely possible?

Compare that to DFINITY’s own livestream for the Caffeine AI reveal — it had around 1k viewers, which felt organic and real.

This just made the whole thing feel off. It honestly took away from the moment and made the real efforts of the DFINITY team behind Caffeine AI look less impactful by comparison.

Just wanted to share my experience. Form your own opinion — but I think stuff like this doesn’t reflect what ICP should stand for.

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So what? X is full of bots, this stream was public and anyone could have joined. Hard to say who was real or not…

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Take this for example:

DFINITY, with over 600k followers, had around 1,000 live viewers during the official Caffeine AI launch — totally believable, organic.

Even the announcement post about Caffeine AI only got around 45k views.

Then you have @ICPHubs, with ~100k followers, pulling 90k live viewers? While most of their posts sit at 1–2k views? That just doesn’t add up.

Maybe most people don’t care — but I think we should. If we’re serious about launching projects like Caffeine AI, which actually have the potential to change the world, then at the very least we should keep things 100% real from that moment on.

DFINITY seems to be doing that. But Caffeine (or whoever is managing the promotion) clearly isn’t.

Not FUD — just calling out something that’s worth fixing.

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Still don’t see what needs fixing here, wasting time for no reason but that’s just me i guess…

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First — 90k live viewers is simply unrealistic, especially for an account that normally gets 1–2k views per post.

And second — your statement is incorrect: X does show concurrent live viewers, not just total clicks. That 90k number wasn’t “just people who opened the stream for a second.” It was the number of people supposedly watching at the same time.

But sure… once again, valid criticism has to come from the community — and somehow we become the problem for pointing it out.

You let this stuff slide, and then wonder why people outside the ICP bubble don’t take the ecosystem seriously.

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Should be fairly trivial to copy the list of hubs views and engagement into a LLM and get a BS rating right?

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100%.

I actually submitted a request to check their followers during the stream yesterday — but with 100k followers, it’s not that easy to verify everything without Account Access.

That said, I still think ICPHubs should be open to revealing their follower details and engagement data. Transparency would go a long way here.

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We should know accurate figures or ICP will look scammy so it is an issue if they are not correct

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I see only an issue on X platform that is full of bots… We had the greatest event yesterday since Genesis but lets worry about fake views on X.

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Hi Badri,

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts — and more importantly, for flying out to Zurich for WCS25. It’s always energizing to see committed community members like yourself show up in person. We’re glad to hear you had an overall positive experience.

Regarding your concern about the ICP HUBS Townhall livestream numbers — we completely understand why it raised some eyebrows, and we appreciate you bringing it up respectfully.
Just to provide some context: the Townhall was the result of two months of dedicated preparation by the HUBS team. Throughout this time, we collaborated closely with ICP community members and beyond, across various regions to build momentum and awareness.

The livestream itself ran for an extended 9.5 hours, allowing people to join at any point and engage with the flow of content throughout the day. The goal wasn’t to impress with numbers. The goal was visibility, education, and community inclusion.

We made a strong effort to ensure the reach was organic and broad — community members and HUBS actively promoted the event to spotlight this special edition of WCS Townhall and showcase the incredible energy within the ecosystem. Even well-known Mario Nawfal supported our mission and shared this on his social media. It won’t be possible without an amazing community who is eager to learn, engage and be excited about Internet Computer potentials.

This wasn’t a vanity stunt. This was community execution at scale.

Since you were in Zurich, you had a front-row seat to the setup and flow of the special guests for Townhall and the ecosystem stage. It would’ve been wonderful to have you join us live at the Townhall or even drop by during the stream itself — especially given how closely you were already connected to the action on the ground. We believe the in-person atmosphere matched the online energy, and we hope future events offer more space for cross-participation and real-time collaboration.

Additionally, we made a deliberate decision to switch from X Spaces to livestreaming specifically to ensure the event wouldn’t be disrupted or botted. Livestreaming also allowed us to offer a higher quality, more controlled experience — especially given the number of guests and the visual materials involved.

The Townhall was a globally coordinated initiative involving 22 different HUBS, spanning regions from Asia to Europe and beyond. It was designed to reach a wide, diverse audience across multiple time zones — ensuring inclusive participation across the global Internet Computer community.

The ICP HUBS Network continues to demonstrate strong and healthy growth, with total combined followers (main + regions) reaching 245,355, reflecting a 13.12% increase since March 2025.

All HUBS accounts are regularly audited and monitored, and while no account can fully eliminate low-quality followers, the numbers reflect a continued focus on authenticity, reach, and responsible community growth.

We’re not in the business of managing perceptions. We’re in the business of delivering real impact — and that’s exactly what we’re doing.

Thanks again for your continued passion and support for the ICP ecosystem.

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Hi Cryptobrown,

Thank you for taking the time to respond and for explaining the context behind the Townhall. I truly appreciate the work that went into organizing it, and I respect the broader mission of community inclusion and visibility across regions.

That said, I want to express my concerns more directly.

The reported 90,000+ live viewers for a 9.5-hour stream, combined with only 309 likes on the X post and about 120,000 total post views, just doesn’t add up. It’s implausible that this volume of live viewers would actively engage with such a long stream — especially when even high-profile events across Web3 rarely generate numbers anywhere near that. From my perspective, this wasn’t a miscalculation — it looks like someone deliberately inflated the view count.

And frankly, we might be lucky that the HUBS team ended up overplaying their hand. It exposed something that many in the community have quietly observed for a while: the credibility gap between how HUBS present themselves and what they actually deliver.

This issue doesn’t exist in isolation. There have been recent allegations and concerns directed at ICP HUBS that have yet to be addressed publicly. Now, on top of that, we’re seeing suspicious metrics that further damage trust.

For context, I’ve been involved as an ambassador for ICP Hub Germany. The team here has done excellent work on the ground — and I’ve been proud to support them. But the contrast in resourcing is staggering: while we’ve had to operate events with budgets of just €100–200, other regions seem to receive millions of dollars — often with very little visible output.

I’ll be speaking more specifically about this imbalance and the structural issues within the HUBS program in an upcoming forum post. But for now, I wanted to make it clear that the combination of unexplained funding, inflated metrics, and lack of accountability is eroding confidence in what should be a community-first initiative.

Thanks again for listening — and I do hope this starts a more honest discussion moving forward.

Best regards,

Badri

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Hi Badri,

As someone a bit closer to the Hubs, just a quick note that the “some hubs earn millions” claim is quite a stretch.

The community grants program stopped accepting submissions some time ago, and the links are no longer active. But the available amounts were around $5k, $15k, or $25k — so all Hub activities (like other community initiatives) have to operate within those constraints. Each grant also has clearly defined KPIs, and if those aren’t met, renewals don’t happen.

Both the Global Adoption team and DFINITY’s Finance team review these KPIs carefully — so it’s not exactly a free-for-all.

If an ambassador in Germany is receiving €100–€200, that’s the same level we were allowed to spend in Portugal and France. No special treatment — just different contexts.

Every Hub has some autonomy to shape its own strategy. Some things work better in China, others in Indonesia, and others in Portugal. But across the board, all Hubs are under pressure to deliver results.

Truth is, the money isn’t much for any Hub. We’re all being pushed to be more efficient and collaborate more — so that expertise in one region can benefit others.

Budgets have actually tightened this year. There’s really no need for a witch hunt or adding to division. What we need is to work better together — through specialization and initiatives like the World Computer Hacker League — to support developers both online and locally.

Especially when it comes to finding partners and sourcing good devs and founders.

Hope this helps ease some of your concerns.

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Hi Tiago89,

thanks for the clarification — and I appreciate you trying to bring some perspective into the discussion. I absolutely agree that we should collaborate more and avoid unnecessary division.

That said, I do believe some points still deserve to be openly discussed — especially when we’re talking about transparency and consistency across Hubs.

Let’s maybe start with the Olympus initiative:

The website is now completely gone, and there’s very little trace of how things ended. From what was shared back then, ICP Hub Kenya reportedly received $15 million. That’s a huge amount — and yet there’s currently no public overview of what impact was achieved, what happened to the funds, or why the site disappeared. For a grant-funded initiative under the “World Computer” banner, that seems… odd.

I’m not trying to witch hunt anyone, but if Hubs are now expected to operate with €100–€200 for ambassadors — which we can all agree is a shoestring budget — it’s fair to ask: Where did such large-scale funding go? What lessons were learned? And more importantly: How can smaller Hubs benefit from that experience or infrastructure, if at all?

I fully support more efficiency and collaboration. But for that to happen, we also need more transparency about past Hub operations — both successful and unsuccessful — so everyone knows what’s actually possible and what’s just marketing fluff.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

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What I don’t understand is why HUBs are so heavily tailored to only focusing on onboarding new Devs and not also committed to maintaining current communities and DEVs that already exist? Seems like a very large oversight to me. We are watching teams walk away on a regular basis, what’s the point of onboarding new teams without making sure they stay?

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We’re all going to know that there’s just not much engagement. The people that would otherwise find awesome new technology without directly searching for it are being fed brainrot garbage on TikTok and YT Shorts more and more because that’s the algorithm nowadays.

This. It’s cool to get new devs, but I think one of the issues with having devs stay is that there’s not much of a support with troubleshooting. The DFINITY team can only do so much on a day to day basis, and community members hardly know what’s going on with the intricacies of the protocol. More devs should be familiar with those deeper mechanisms of the IC outside of DFINITY. Unfortunately, they won’t get that support from public education nor even private education, and that stuff takes time to study in a world where time is money.

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