GetFreeDash campaign must be stopped ASAP

[Macrochip]

This message was posted by dashmaximalist aka cryptoridez today on Discord:

This is not the first time this has happened. And an apology is not enough this time. This campaign was advertised with a six figure amount of signups (140,000 is the latest number I'm aware of). Now you have to ask yourself how many of those were fake? How can we tout "100K signups, success! GO DASH!!" when it's the same bunch of people receiving free money over and over at the expense of our network? How does it help the DAO being robbed blind? The damage is done. The question is do we just suck it up (again!) and act like nothing happened? I say no. The only reasonable and responsible way forward is to shut down the program to prevent further theft. The money is literally burnt and letting this go on another day would be pure insanity.

I strongly urge any MNOs to switch their votes to NO on this proposal due to the reasons stated above.

This isn't even about Dash alone by the way: Dash"maximalist" has launched the same exact proposal/campaign over at SmartCash. How many coins are being stolen there from fake signups right now? The SmartCash community might want to know...

EDIT:
The goal of this campaign was to increase usage and adoption of Dash. So we have to look at active addresses and transactions per day. Let's look at the last 3 months:

Both charts are all over the place but certainly not going upwards.

If we really reached 140,000(!!!) people as this campaign is constantly being advertised with, then please excuse me for asking when I say: Where the fuck are they on those charts??

 

[TanteStefana]

I don't know Macrochip. I'd kind of like to see an experiment like this take it's course. It's kind of a controlled air drop where you have to do some sort of work to collect the coins. If they can get this to somehow be non-gamable (or at least more costly to game than to gain) this could be a hugely useful system.

David Hay is working on a system where he takes fingerprints to limit how much any individual gets.

Getting funds into the hands at the lowest side of the triangle (base I mean) is a real problem. It's best to have everyone earn them, of course, I'm no socialist, but at the same time, the engine needs something to burn to produce steam.

The way I see it, everything with Dash is half enterprise, half experiment. I'd be surprised if any of the MNOs who voted yes to this saw it as anything more than an experiment and probably wrote it off as a likely failure but saw potential if it could be made to work. Sure, we'd be safer if we cut funding to everything unless we could hold the proposer's family at knife-point to ensure delivery, but at the same time, just like with government regulation, you can stifle great ideas because you don't think it'll make money or see results next month.

On the other hand, if we see a different project that we decide deserves the funds more, this might be an option. But if these guys crack the nut on distribution, I feel every penny was worth it. Just my opinion

 

[Macrochip]

Please consider that this is only the tip of the iceberg here. We got this report from the proposal owner himself. He reported this assuming it wouldn't hurt his prop too much. But this report should get you thinking. How much fraud is going on that we're not being told about?

Also consider that Venezuela is extremely overrepresented as a singular country within our Treasury. We have funded meetups, conferences, podcasts, news-shows, this and tons of other initiatives in that one country. Let's not forget the rest of the world, shall we?

But if these guys crack the nut on distribution, I feel every penny was worth it.

The project's been running for months. It was even renewed before that. There is no measurable increase in usage or daily transactions in the past 6 months.

On the other hand, if we see a different project that we decide deserves the funds more, this might be an option.

It's the only reasonable option. Look at all the currently unfunded proposals worthy of funding this month. It's going to be very tight again with 100% being allocated in a couple of days. Do you really want to see a good proposal go unfunded while bleeding another 150 Dash into this proposal which has a proven history of mismanagment?

For the sake of sanity, free up the resources and spend the money on something worthwhile. Even if you don't care about 10,000+ USD being gifted to scammers (most likely much much more), at least this last argument must make sense to you.

The lack of follow-up and checking in on already-funded proposals is really concerning. Once I thought our problem with the Treasury was the "Pay&Pray" approach, when it turns out to be "Fire&Forget". Even DashWatch.org is showing this proposal as "All Green" ignoring the first reported instance of fraud couple of weeks ago...

 

[DashWatchTeam]

Please consider that this is only the tip of the iceberg here. We got this report from the proposal owner himself. He reported this assuming it wouldn't hurt his prop too much. But this report should get you thinking. How much fraud is going on that we're not being told about?

Also consider that Venezuela is extremely overrepresented as a singular country within our Treasury. We have funded meetups, conferences, podcasts, news-shows, this and tons of other initiatives in that one country. Let's not forget the rest of the world, shall we?



The project's been running for months. It was even renewed before that. There is no measurable increase in usage or daily transactions in the past 6 months.



It's the only reasonable option. Look at all the currently unfunded proposals worthy of funding this month. It's going to be very tight again with 100% being allocated in a couple of days. Do you really want to see a good proposal go unfunded while bleeding another 150 Dash into this proposal which has a proven history of mismanagment?

For the sake of sanity, free up the resources and spend the money on something worthwhile. Even if you don't care about 10,000+ USD being gifted to scammers (most likely much much more), at least this last argument must make sense to you.

The lack of follow-up and checking in on already-funded proposals is really concerning. Once I thought our problem with the Treasury was the "Pay&Pray" approach, when it turns out to be "Fire&Forget". Even DashWatch.org is showing this proposal as "All Green" ignoring the first reported instance of fraud couple of weeks ago...

Dash Watch is a neutral and unbias reporting group that does not post any accusations until they are empirically proven. We have been notified in the past that there was potentially user "fraud" going on with the GetFreeDash proposal but there was no solid evidence of this. Dash Watch has to be very careful when posting these type of accusations as it can easily start a witch hunt in which only one side has been heard.

We've asked for additional funding this cycle because we need the increased man-hours to handle more close auditing of bigger proposals. We have over 60 other proposals we are following up on so with limited man-hours we can only give a cursory overview of proposal progress. With increased funding we can increase our scope so that we are diving deeper into selected proposals to help increase proposal accountability.

 

[Macrochip]

Dash Watch is a neutral and unbias reporting group that does not post any accusations until they are empirically proven. We have been notified in the past that there was potentially user "fraud" going on with the GetFreeDash proposal but there was no solid evidence of this. Dash Watch has to be very careful when posting these type of accusations as it can easily start a witch hunt in which only one side has been heard.

We've asked for additional funding this cycle because we need the increased man-hours to handle more close auditing of bigger proposals. We have over 60 other proposals we are following up on so with limited man-hours we can only give a cursory overview of proposal progress. With increased funding we can increase our scope so that we are diving deeper into selected proposals to help increase proposal accountability.

I understand resources are limited and I think most MNOs agree that your work is extremely valuable and deserves the funding it needs. I know I do.

But let's be perfectly clear here: This is no accusation without evidence. It's a report from the proposal owner himself. The second one of this nature. And regarding your proposal evaluation on "GetFreeDash" I'm referring to the first fraud report which was done by the proposal owner himself as well several weeks ago but remains without any mention on DashWatch.

If they report fraud within their own project there's hardly any reason to look for further evidence, unless you assume they're trying to sabotage themselves...? (On that note I find it deeply troubling that the prop owner is the only source for these information)

 

[DashWatchTeam]

I understand resources are limited and I think most MNOs agree that your work is extremely valuable and deserves the funding it needs. I know I do.

But let's be perfectly clear here: This is no accusation without evidence. It's a report from the proposal owner himself. The second one of this nature. And regarding your proposal evaluation on "GetFreeDash" I'm referring to the first fraud report which was done by the proposal owner himself as well several weeks ago but remains without any mention on DashWatch.

If they report fraud within their own project there's hardly any reason to look for further evidence, unless you assume they're trying to sabotage themselves...? (On that note I find it deeply troubling that the prop owner is the only source for these information)

Hi Macrochip, thanks for the response.

I think the first report from the proposal owner about the fraudulent activity was on March 31, 2018, found here: https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/...-your-support-urgent.28708/page-7#post-178808

However, if you look at our latest report on the Dash Watch site, it is March 24, 2018. So the latest report was created and posted before the proposal owner addressed the fraud issue. However, we expect the proposal owner to address his challenges in the April report.

To address your point about proposal owners being the only source of information, that is a challenge we currently face as well. We try to be as objective as possible, and this means not including our own, or other's, subjective opinions on a proposal's progress. Things we're working on to address this challenge is to firstly create a "stoplight system" of evaluating proposals. So objectively grading proposals on pre-defined metrics such as scope, budget, deliverables, etc and giving a simple Green, Orange, and Red rating to proposals so that MNO's can quickly filter and see which proposals are concerns. We are also working on a newsfeed type of feature on the Dashwatch.org website so that we can post updates from community members and proposal owners. This would create a resource that the community can quickly see the latest news regarding proposals.

We absolutely understand your frustrations. Here at Dash Watch we want nothing more than to praise the proposals who are doing good work and call out the proposals who are under-performing or have malicious intent. But to do so without sufficient evidence would hurt the credibility of what this project is trying to do. That being said, we have several ideas in place on how we think we could increase the accountability measures at Dash Watch.

 

[Macrochip]

Oh dim-oh... you never fail to entertain with your lack of basic understanding, common sense and sanity. I voted no on that proposal quite a while ago.

 

[demo]

To address your point about proposal owners being the only source of information, that is a challenge we currently face as well. We try to be as objective as possible, and this means not including our own, or other's, subjective opinions on a proposal's progress. Things we're working on to address this challenge is to firstly create a "stoplight system" of evaluating proposals. So objectively grading proposals on pre-defined metrics such as scope, budget, deliverables, etc and giving a simple Green, Orange, and Red rating to proposals so that MNO's can quickly filter and see which proposals are concerns. We are also working on a newsfeed type of feature on the Dashwatch.org website so that we can post updates from community members and proposal owners. This would create a resource that the community can quickly see the latest news regarding proposals.

Stop hiding behind your finger.
There is no objectivity!

1. You should allow all reports to appear in Dashwatch.
2. You should allow ratings and votes in these reports.
3. You should allow the reader to view, sort or hide these reports based not on all the votes, but based on the votes that have been casted by the people the reader trusts.

 

[demo]

Oh dim-oh... you never fail to entertain with your lack of basic understanding, common sense and sanity. I voted no on that proposal quite a while ago.

In that case, let us confiscate your followers' money. A leader is never dangerous. The dangerous people are the stupids/slaves who follow him.

The bug of getfreedash has been solved now. If someone is a proponent of the getfreedash idea, why to vote down getfreedash now? He should vote it down only if he thinks that there may be another bug in it. Otherwise, if no other bug is possible to occur in getfreedash, then this means that getfreedash is a mature project now, so people should vote it up.

Of course in order to check getfreedash for bugs, getfreedash should publish its data and turn to opensource. The fact that getfreedash is not opensource, is a serious bug of getfreedash. Of course the same bug occurs to the Dash Evolution project, so if you decide to vote down getfreedash team because of not being opensource, you should also vote down the Dash Evolution core team.

 

[tungfa]

i did enough giveaways in my time here
to have learned : you always get scammed !
u have to be very good to not be ! (and “very good” means a ton of man power )
so 10-15% are easy something which u can write off from the beginning on unfortunately

tx for reporting Macro
tbh the proposal owner should have manned up and brought this forward himself !
trying to “hide” the fact never looks good and goes on his rep

 

[DashWatchTeam]

Stop hiding behind your finger.
There is no objectivity!

1. You should allow all reports to appear in Dashwatch.
2. You should allow ratings and votes in these reports.
3. You should allow the reader to view, sort or hide these reports based not on all the votes, but based on the votes that have been casted by the people the reader trusts.

Hi demo, can you please clarify what you mean?

1. All the reports we write do appear on Dash Watch.
2. What do you mean by ratings and votes?
3. How do we decide "people the reader trusts"? Do you mean have a user database that can be filtered through?

Our goal at Dash Watch is to report objective information, we want to stay away from subjective information.

 

[TroyDASH]

i did enough giveaways in my time here
to have learned : you always get scammed !
u have to be very good to not be ! (and “very good” means a ton of man power )
so 10-15% are easy something which u can write off from the beginning on unfortunately

tx for reporting Macro
tbh the proposal owner should have manned up and brought this forward himself !
trying to “hide” the fact never looks good and goes on his rep

He did bring it forward himself - dashmaximalist is currently @cryptoridez on discord

 

[Dashmaximalist]

i did enough giveaways in my time here
to have learned : you always get scammed !
u have to be very good to not be ! (and “very good” means a ton of man power )
so 10-15% are easy something which u can write off from the beginning on unfortunately

tx for reporting Macro
tbh the proposal owner should have manned up and brought this forward himself !
trying to “hide” the fact never looks good and goes on his rep

yes giveaways are prone to be fraud, we are really trying to be our best having said that, after we close the loophole we are seeing lessers sign-ups per day ( like 500 or so per day ) which up on closed examination look genuine all gmail.com registrations and proper first name last name, different IP addresses.

like mentioned previously i am the only who reported myself after spending few days understanding and closing the loophole

 

[tungfa]

tx man

 

[Dashmaximalist]

I see a lot of votes converted to NO already, which is an absolute knee-jerk reaction without even doing some basic research

I personally think it would be absolutely foolish to stop this project now that we have spent so time and have much more understanding or user behavior and ability to control fraud.

I am already very frustrated with almost the constant hate that I have put with up with absolutely nothing in return, if the project gets defunded, I will get out of DASH once forever ... thanks.

 

[demo]

Hi demo, can you please clarify what you mean?

1. All the reports we write do appear on Dash Watch.
2. What do you mean by ratings and votes?
3. How do we decide "people the reader trusts"? Do you mean have a user database that can be filtered through?

Our goal at Dash Watch is to report objective information, we want to stay away from subjective information.

I mean you should allow everyone to subscribe into your platform with a username and password, evaluate the quality of your reports and be able to post relevant reports (or answers) in a link nearby.
You should also allow the viewer to filter these additional reports, not neccessarily based on the ratings of all users, but also based on the ratings of the subscribed users who have be declared by the viewer as friends.

 

[demo]

I see a lot of votes converted to NO already, which is an absolute knee-jerk reaction without even doing some basic research.

https://dashvotetracker.com/history.php?ProposalID=502
Dont worry . The votes doesnt matter. What it matters is the unique individuals who hide behind these votes. These individuals are not too many. They are just macroship and his few followers.

Furthermore what I have said (and has been deleted by the moderators of the forum) is that you should mention the dash addresses of the venezuella scammers and the Dash community should firstly hard fork the dash blockchain (in order to confiscate the money from the scammers, similarly to what ethereum community did) then give a reward the venezuela scammers because they discovered an interesting bug in getfreedash.

 

[Dashmaximalist]

https://dashvotetracker.com/history.php?ProposalID=502
Dont worry . The votes doesnt matter. What it matters is the individuals who hide behind the votes. These individuals are not too many. They are just macroship and his followers.

Furthermore what I have said (and has been deleted by the moderators of the forum) is that you should mention the dash addresses of the venezuella scammers and the Dash community should firstly hard fork the dash blockchain (in order to confiscate the money from the scammers, similarly to what ethereum community did) then give a reward the venezuela scammers because they discovered an interesting bug in getfreedash.

hardfork for getting back $10,000 sounds like really really crazy , but i like your spirit

 

[Argon31]

@Dashmaximalist Your project is amongsthe few good ideas for the important problem of dash distribution. The money that has been lost to fraud is nothing. Paypal lost $1m a day to fraud in the initial days doesnt mean it wasnt useful.

On the other hand, einstiens are willing to fund inflated venezuela proposals, advertising and sponsorships with zero understanding of real costs for the lowest end work.
All these sweet looking venezuelans are raking it in through fake budgets and people arent asking them any questions.

People are trying to market dash like a cola.

Get this straight: Things that work here are mostly advertising, sponsorship or zero roi journalism related. Or if you have backing.

The way the masternode community has treated you is a shame. It shows transparency and hard work is overrated.
I really think you should forget about this and start organizing conferences or learn how to dress up like ben swann if you want to make money.

Maybe then you will have the likes of @Macrochip and @TroyDASH cheering you on with 1000 dash.

 

[demo]

hardfork for getting back $10,000 sounds like really really crazy , but i like your spirit

Hard forks shoud be automated inside the dash code, and should be the rule and not the exception, especially in cases of fraud. Of course the hard fork (no matter how many money it deals with) should always occur after a community vote.