Warning - Boom DAO Red Flag!

Governance
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I am not sure how many people have read the BOOM DAO whitepaper and I have to admit that I had not until quite recently. There is something that I noticed that caused great alarm for me and I feel I have to draw attention to it.

Staking ICP as 8-year Neurons

BOOM DAO is planning to create a proposal to stake a significant amount of ICP as a BOOM DAO 8-year neuron. This neuron would participate in NNS voting by following a BOOM DAO beacon neuron, which would seek to influence the IC’s governance to align with BOOM DAO’s long-term goals of advocating for the ICP gaming ecosystem at large. The neuron would also earn voting rewards for the DAO, which could be used to cover ongoing costs or build up a reserve. However, this plan depends on whether a small but significant change is made to the IC to allow canisters to control neurons.

Unless I am understanding this incorrectly, Boom DAO are saying that they will only stake for 8 years if they have the ability to then sell the neuron?

Dfinity have already said they do not want a neuron marketplace, and I agree with the reasons why. It kind of defeats the whole purpose of locking up and showing your faith in the community.

If Boom DAO really intended to lock up for 8 years, why are the funds they removed from the treasury only locked for 6 months? Waiting for that bull by any chance?

I have been wary of this project ever since they made a bogus announcement about working with us, but their recent behaviour is raising red flag after red flag.

I do not benefit in any way from their downfall, I actually hope I am wrong and this isnt a blatant scam. It would be great to bring more games (and therefore more players) into the IC ecosystem. However, scams and rugpulls bring nothing but bad publicity and make people less likely to invest in real projects going forward.

Once again we are not working with BOOM and never will.

I strongly advise you to avoid this project and the Boom token.

Beware!

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Oh the white paper is here for anyone else that wants to read it - Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.

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Boxy Dude also said they disingenuously listed them as a partner https://twitter.com/icboxy/status/1717155566110347313

Boom Dao needs to stop that nonsesne if true.

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Boom Dao and ICX all took all ICP from SNS treasury, we should believe what they do not what they said. what they do show they rug and fabricate some excuses to deceive us. so sucks.

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Thank you for this topic @Thyassa, for me personally I felt confidence in the BOOM DAO project (also) as the main developer/founder (@atomikm) was a long-term and trusted contributor to the ICP ecosystem - and I believe I was not alone.

@atomikm please can you provide a statement regarding the described Red Flags and overall current situation?

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Imo the only serious project they currently have is @Gekctek 's library https://github.com/BoomDAO/ICP.NET
I think he wrote he is just a contributor and not part of project management.
And then later Boom DAO posted

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which makes me think they mean Tommy or https://github.com/h1teshtr1path1
Which only made the game launcher, a list of links to other people’s games,
and a weird world engine that doesn’t look like it’s currently doing anything more than handle tokens.
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That makes me wonder if the bulk cash is going to the devs who actually make usable things for gaming.

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You could tell it was a scam with the botted replies in the SNS proposal thread and how they used a fiver project for their demo presentation. There were so many red flags about the project and I voiced my concerns in the proposal thread but eventually these concerns were censored or baisclaly anybody questioning anything they proposed was pretty much censored.
It’s funny though how the team doxxed themselves and the majority of the projects that “partnered” with them will now be considered bad actors as well when that could not be the case.

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We got slammed for debating that it’s not time for SNS yet. So many Founding Partners including Rick and DSCVR and Dfinity backing there really was nothing much the community could do.
https://u52bf-3qaaa-aaaal-qb5wq-cai.icp0.io/ So yeah only one is unique and the rest is history.
Not the first and for sure not the last.

Also :face_with_monocle:
“6. The BOOM DAO and its Tokenholders are not liable to any other Tokenholder for any indirect, special, consequential, or anticipated profit losses arising under any cause, including negligence, strict liability, contract, or otherwise.
7. No Tokenholder shall bring any legal claim, action, or proceeding against any other Tokenholder or BOOM DAO on any basis.
8. No Tokenholder is relying upon any statement or representation made by the founding team, BOOM DAO, or any other Tokenholder.”

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We should just get this crap delisted from the exchanges so they can’t do any more damage.

Plus, it’s ok to say those kinds of things but will it stand up in court…

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The only thing I’ll comment on here is just the assumption that canister-controlled neurons means they want to sell the 8 year neuron.

I think there is a misunderstanding here, so let me add some context:

How allowing canister-controlled neurons could enable neuron sales/transfers
The idea is that a marketplace could be created where canisters are created that hold neurons, and then the ownership of the canisters themselves would be tradeable. You cannot change the owner of the neuron, but you can change the owner of a canister.

Why an SNS DAO would require canister-controlled neurons
Right now, there’s no way for an SNS DAO controlled canister to control a NNS neuron directly because the NNS code intentionally prohibits any canisters from owning neurons (there’s no technical barrier). This means there must always be a trusted human custodian controlling the principal which owns each NNS neuron. Therefore, BOOM DAO is just stating a fact, they need a canister-controlled neuron feature enabled so that they can have a NNS neuron which is collectively owned by the SNS DAO.

An SNS DAO Selling a Neuron
If a canister controlled by an SNS DAO did in fact own a neuron, then it technically might be able to sell it, but not very easily. First off, all the SNS token holders would need to approve the ownership transfer proposal. Secondly, I’m sure there would be some difficult logistics regarding payment escrow, etc. I can’t see why anyone would want to go through the trouble of buying a neuron from an SNS DAO, since easier alternatives would likely exist.

Current status of neuron trading & canister-controlled neurons
There are technically ways to do both of these things, it’s just that the methods for doing them are a bit messy and hacked together. You can trade a neuron by trading an Internet Identity on IDGeek. Also, a canister should be able to do an HTTPS outcall to the NNS canister and use Threshold ECDSA to control an NNS neuron, but this is very complex and I’m not certain if a team has pulled it off yet. Even if the code for this was made open source, it’s not an ideal situation and probably too hard to maintain for it to be a good option for an SNS DAO canister.

Possible Solution: Permissioned Canisters allowed to hold NNS neurons
The NNS code could be updated to allow for either:

  1. A permissioned set of canisters voted on and approved by the NNS which are granted the ability to control NNS neurons (similar to how the Known Neurons registration works).
  2. A blanket approval that grants any SNS DAO controlled canister the ability to control NNS neurons.

Personally, I think more ICP projects should be creating neurons and participating in governance, particularly SNS DAOs. While I also understand the concern around giving any and all canisters the ability to control an NNS neuron, I don’t really see any risk to giving SNS DAO controlled canisters this capability. Personally, I believe it would be ideal to have decentralized Known Neurons for people to follow!

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That’s correct. I am just a contributor of ICP.NET and potentially projects down the line, but i am not involved in management. In optimistic about Boom DAO but I have no inside knowledge as of yet. It was laid out in the roadmap, so everything seems to be going according to plan

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I don’t think there’s a misunderstanding.

I think Boom DAO are using the guise of wanting the neuron controlled by the SNS to distract from the fact they just drained the treasury. All this talk of being committed to the future of the project, but there’s absolutely nothing that shows that commitment.

They didn’t want the vote that moved all the ICP off to their wallet to be controlled by the SNS, so why would they care about the neurons? Apparently I voted yes, didn’t get the chance to vote though since they waited till > 50% followed their dev neuron.

“We would lock for 8 years, but we want X first, so we’ll just lock for 6 months.”

Does that seem like
a) they’re looking for a technical solution that benefits the community, and want to earn a tiny amount of APY for the project in the interim?

b) they want to dump in 6 months and are looking for excuses

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It seems the project doesn’t intend to rug. It looks like they intend to use the funds to keep building. Withdrawing 80% of the funds isn’t what I or anyone expected (even though it was in their whitepaper). But it is allowed by the SNS framework. And BOOM DAO seems like a team committed to the IC.

If people don’t want this type of proposal to happen, then the SNS framework should have code that enforces the behavior that the community wants. Perhaps beacon neurons shouldn’t be able to vote on treasury proposals. But what they did doesn’t go against what the SNS allows. And they seem committed to use the funds to keep building. If in the future, we want projects to do smaller withdrawals, then we need to have code in the SNS that enforces this. Code is law.

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BOOM DAO has done a remarkable job of responding to the many concerns that keep popping up throughout its history. But that raises the question: How and why are they so good at managing perception of their project, and why do concerns keep popping up over and over? At some point you have to look past their ability to put out fires and ask why do things keep catching on fire? Something is going on here. Whether it’s incompetence or malicious activity is irrelevant. I’m staying clear of investing for now.

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As I have clarified many times in direct response to your false claims, I am not involved in the BoomDAO project in any way. It’s not clear to me why you continuously want to make this association.

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The guy from Boom DAO has a handle also called ICP Maximalist or something similar.

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Supposedly you contributed in censoring comments in the thread for their sns proposal that outlined that the project was a scam. So if this is true then you help contribute to sway people’s opinion on the boomdao project.
Anybody go look at their sns proposals thread and tell me it’s not botted responses

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I often stand up for civilized and intellectually honest conversation. If people get their comments hidden or deleted for violating the forum rules then that’s on them. It’s happened to me many times. Even though I often disagree with the assessment, I prefer to use it as a learning experience and move on. It’s very easy to raise red flags in a diplomatic way without ad hominem attacks, etc. Comments that remain civilized have always been welcome on the forum and are not typically censored.

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That’s true. One of the main leaders for BoomDAO goes by @icpmaximalist. He started the ICP Maximalist Network chat group on Telegram just after genesis. He also was a leader for PlethoraGame, IC Gallery, and the Moonwalker NFT series. These are all positive achievements. That’s not saying I agree with the withdrawal of 80% of the BoomDAO SNS treasury, but he has a history of building communities and projects in the ICP ecosystem that I think is mostly positive. My hope is that he and @atomikm will spend more time addressing concerns that have been raised recently on the forum such as this thread, but I can also understand if he is hesitant at this time due to all the criticism.

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Yes there were instances where it wasn’t civilized discussion but that happened after they started blatantly censoring/marking everything that questioned them as off topic.
If you aren’t signed into an account you cannot read the hidden responses. Meaning people fell for the bot shilling and decided boomdao was a legitimate project. Then they got away with presenting their project to dfinity with a game they bought off of fiver and just put it in a canister then claimed they built it. Sad how many people here fell for this