A weird drama has appeared involving SmartCash and one of their former developers @msg768 who took the SmartCash tip bots for several platforms and left with them the project. In his public statement he critizises the lack of decentralization of voting for SmartCash proposals among other things. Here is his post: SmartCash Leaks - Episode 1 - TipBots Down
I wrote a long reply under that post which I share here once more:
Hi msg768, thank you for this insight into the SmartCash structures. It was certainly interesting and shows some serious concerns.
I would like to start with why you took the bots? Weren't you paid to create them for SmartCash? Why do you think you own them?
The fact that the founders rewarded themselves handsomely is pretty common in the cryptoworld. We see skewed distributions all over the place, for example Steem or even worse EOS and yet have grand hopes into the possibilities for these coins. I don't like it but that doesn't mean I think these coins are doomed. Quite the contrary. I feel very similar about SmartCash. Also, what you describe is a typical problem that all decentralized coins face: The first few years are still very much centralized and must gradually try to decentralize more.
However, SmartCash is currently suffering from an aggressive voting strategy from the whales. We didn't need your post to see this. For the past two months or so we see millions of votes smashing down the vast majority of proposals while before that we rarely saw more than 3 million total votes. The biggest problem with that is basically that it appears as if proposals are being decided by a few whales alone.
This is a big problem for growing decentralization of votes. Steemit inc. for example is never using their upvote power and only intervene by supporting dApps with delegated Steem Power. Making proposals censorship resistant and limit the massive influence of the founders in favor of more decentralization is something to strive for in the future. As it is in the best interest of the SMART blockchain I am sure we will find ways to make that happen together with the whales.
Also, I think that the Ben Swann proposal was indeed overvalued in terms of reach. But I also think that it was a prestige thing to support someone from the alternative media and freedom community. SmartCash has a lot of the Anarchapulco vibe and should in fact sponsor a few more people with maybe slightly smaller payments to create SmartCash sponsored content. I can totally understand why the whales threw their votes at him. It would have been nice to see Ben hold the coins instead of dumping them. Maybe this could be a part of a future proposal.
To repeatedly compare SmartCash with BitConnect is a pretty low attack, though and the only reason why I didn't upvote this otherwise interesting post. BitConnect was an obvious pyramid scheme that was doomed from the beginning. SmartCash on the other hand is a feature rich crypto with tons of cool open source development and a great vision. Managing the community treasury and voting process in a more decentralized way is achievable and I don't see the founders blocking that as they want to see SmartCash thrive more than anybody else.
And finally, dropping chunks of the treasury as airdrops on the holders and exclude the whales would surely redistribute wealth and voting power on SmartCash. My initial thought was that it would be a bad socialist move. But that would not take away anything from the whales, just make the community more powerful and lower the way to blown-up treasury, which will continue to grow afterwards anyway. On the other hand it would most certainly create a huge selling pressure on the price as many would just want to cash out the extra money to survive the bear market. So I don't know about that one.
All-in-all I think your post will hopefully by heard by the whales so that we can all come together and solve the decentralization problem for proposals and treasury instead of fighting and creating FUD for SmartCash. The price will probably drop much further together with the entire market. I hope I can use my chance to get a bigger stake then because I believe in the future of SmartCash. It is just so much more fun to hold and use compared to most other coins that I cannot help myself but to be optimistic.
▶️ DTube
▶️ IPFS
Gosh, I still have some SMART in the bot unclaimed, ate they good as gone? Also, why isn't the bot source code opened at all?
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I'm the developer. The steemit bot will be back live soon. The discordbot went live yesterday but the so-called "official" teams have banned me and the tipbot from their discord because they do not agree with my views and concerns and are afraid of my influence. They've also hacked and emptied the wallets but me and someone else have donated to fix that issue. Feel free to join the new discord for more information. We don't ban anyone there: https://discord.gg/crPxZ47
Say that in your original post. I'll make sure to check that out. Thanks for the effort.
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I have added it already at the end of my post :]
Tell me if a police car is stolen, when the police attempt to recover it, are they hacking it ? No their not, the smartcash team, is trying to minimise losses from a person who absconded with teamwork product, which is causing the community issue. your attempting to play robin hood but plain and simple you absconded from the people and now you want to hand it back if they go to you, instead of giving back to the team so they can administer it. Seems like your hiding somthing?
He took down the tipbots to bring attention to the conversations you keep ignoring; you guys are flat out lying on the website and actively in discord to users and in marketing due to the fact smartcash has been suffering from regulatory capture and it needs to be discussed.
Heres a definition for ya.
Regulatory capture is a form of government failure which occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of special interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating.
Notice the; when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of special interest groups
Thats you guys. You are not following through with the reasons I helped started this project and I feel as if the rug was pulled out from under me and now all the strawmen like yourself finally cant afford thier lavish vacations so you are here to try and make up fake arguments to deflect long enough to pump the price so you can be greedy again.
Sorry, not on my watch. Sue me, I welcome it. I will happily return the favor with 10x the money, support and logic, not to mention justice on my side. Stop picking on this guy for bringing attention to shit under your rug.
Again, keep making stupid baseless comments and I will be right behind you, better yet, lets do this on a recorded video conversation for everyone to see or do you not have the balls for that? Or perhaps your founders and overlords would like to do it?
No?
Thought so.
I think your wording is pretty harsh and not very helpful for the dialogue. However, I applaud the idea to come together and speak about the issue on camera, civilized and calm. I think the entire SmartCash community would appreciate that very much as we should be transparent and willing to find solutions for the critizised dezentralization problem that is obvious and apparent to all active users for a while now.
Firstly, you're not a police neither are the other hive coordinators or anyone in the hives really. I was and have been in charge of the tipbots on twitter, steemit and discord since the beginning and am still here and the same day the bots went offline I posted a tweet letting everyone know that I have quit working with smartcash.cc and that tipbots are currently down and that updates will be soon posted. What's happened however is that the so-called official hives have stolen the funds without my permission and are now accusing me of stealing the funds and running away and aren't even allowing the users to withdraw the funds by banning the bot on their discord server, after me and BigD chipped in from our own pockets, because if they do then their whole accusation and defamation charges becomes baseless and exposed. I offered to hand over the ownership of my work to the centralized hives I have been working with for a severance pay which was rejected. I never claimed that if the severance pay is not made, I am going to steal the funds of community members instead, did I? Neither was I in any contract that defined the ownership or license of my works. In fact, I wasn't in ANY contract whasoever. Not to mention the simple term of all tipbots about no one being responsible for any lost funds to discourage users from holding funds in centralized hot wallets which are prone to attack. These are all baseless assumptions by the power-hungry founders who want to control everything for the sake of influence and narrative.
Sadly the developer who left, decided to act in a centralist manner, by not allowing the community to access there funds before leaving and shutting things down. The source code has been forked, but that does not contain the wallet addresses which hold the funds, smartcash will cover people who got caught out by this selfish developer. DM one of the Mods on Discord and they will help you claim funds.
Thanks for the assistance.
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I hope they work it out soon. You make some good points. I was thinking that limiting whale votes to a really high number would help to even out a voting system such as this. Limiting rewards seems like to much social work. Those that created the technology for others should be well compensated. The question with that is what is the limit?
The question with that is what is the limit?
There should be no limit. The free market decides if the distribution is attractive enough or not. And everyone puts the "feeled limit" somewhere else anywhere. We should just try to find solutions as a community so that the decentralization is improved. I believe this is the foundation of SmartCash and I also think that the founders believe in that principle as well but also want to push things forward with a controlling hand. there is a reason why Rome had the position of a dictator for crisis situations. It is faster as less or no dialogue is required. I am not advertising for it. But I understand their acting. So let's come together at the table, shall we?
Agreed, as long as the power that be is not antagonistic to opposition in any form. They can voice their opinion ok n in such an example but should n ok t act. King of like what Trump is doing with the fake Russian collusion investigation. Expose the lies instead of deplatforming them. Having a memory is our goal to learn from history.
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I suggest SmartCash to start thinking on using the #1UP system, that could solve Centralization and a fare voting along with a similar tool like @steem-ua system as a way of reputation.
Interesting idea but the question would be "who is entitled to vote"? Everyone? People with one SMART? People with 10K SMART?
To the question in your title, my Magic 8-Ball says:
Hi! I'm a bot, and this answer was posted automatically. Check this post out for more information.
Your answering algorithm seems questionable. Which is pretty ironic.
lol
a have been moving my smart mining over to different crypts just of the info. in case its go to shit. but i the can finger it out then it will be ok a think.
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I have no idea what any of this stuff means hahaha, that's probably for the better. I've basically stayed away from all the cryptos except Steem and Litecoin. I basically find most of the others really boring. I know I'm probably missing out on some action, but I don't have FOMO so I'm good haha.
Just hope SmartCash does not go to zero and then oblivion...