Just last week, I published a post titled Isn't Time Ripe for a Scam on Steem? and here we get a taste of it.
The case in question is the recent launch of a new project or tribe on Steem Engine called RealityHubs with their own token RHB listed on SE.
They were selling tokens for 0.2 STEEM per RHB on Steem Engine.
Although its initial token prices seemed to be on a higher side to me, I decided to buy some for two reasons:
The first was they are offering some airdrop to their top stakers. And who don't love airdrops?
Second and the more important one to make me buy at such a high rate was that it was a very new project and it's a fact that any new project takes some time to widely distribute tokens and then users to stake them up for influencing the reward pool on its platform. So initially, early stakers can influence a high share of token reward pool through voting.
I had a hunch that by the time of airdrop, RHB prices will drop drastically. Post payouts and curation rewards too starts coming in after 7 day payout period ends. But I calculated that I'll easily get several fold more tokens than my initial buy, if I was able to gather a few votes on my post or even through curation rewards. So that even if I was able to sell my surplus tokens even at the half of the initial prices, I'll be able to get back my initial investment.
But it appears that this team intentionally cheated on it and didn't allow early investors to cash out.
I was surprised to find out that several posts were already published using its official tag even before the launch announcement for this platform was officially made through their blog. This means that some people were privy to this information of launch and the official tag they will be using. So that selected group can earn more tokens before anyone else can.
Secondly, when the 7 day period was over, users were unable to claim their earned RHB rewards. They had intentionally made their SCOT settings to not to issue any rewards from their platform without making any public announcement of this intend beforehand.
In fact, they have specifically mentioned in their launch announcement:
The payout on every post will be in 7 days. The concept of payout time is not different from what we have on steemit. Also, the value of RHB vote on any content will fluctuate depending on the market forces as well as the consensus which includes the upvotes and downvotes. And the payout will be on a 50/50 basis for author and curators.
Several users were repeatedly trying to claim their earned rewards from their own platform as well as Steem Engine website without any success. When they contacted the team, very vague answers were offered like to try again after some time, there may be a problem at your end or there is a bug in Steem Engine interface etc. etc., when in reality, it was as simple as just changing a SCOT setting parameter.
Here I'll post a few Screen Shots from these conversations on their Discord server. Just look at the way they communicated. It is enough to prove how shady are their operations.
But later this person replied to me that it was done on purpose!
Yet she wasn't offered any solution except some assurance!
Surprisingly, even after a day passed by, the founder of the project himself gave such a vague reply that they were still investigating for at whose end the problem was!!!
Blaming the Steem Engine team
Passing the buck to someone else is an age old game. Check some other responses from the team:
Now I know how agile and competent Steem Engine team is. These kind of remarks tarnish Steem Engine's reputation. I don't think I even need to tag them here to offer a justification or a defense. If RHB team thinks they still have some case, they can tag them here.
When I commented to their official blog pointing out about the SCOT settings, my comment was ignored. So I self-upvoted it to make it to the top. The reaction was to first downvote my comment into oblivion so no one can see it and then giving a response that they had intentionally done that.
You can see the expanded view of my comment below:
They have confessed here that it was done for a purpose.
However, to this date, I haven't received any answer to my question, "What purpose?"
This whole thing looks so shady and unconvincing to me, no doubt, as soon as the token-claim feature and token-issuance were enabled, RHB prices were slashed down by over 20,000%.
If it were enabled right at the beginning, I would have easily recovered my investment & profited, ...and had bought a few more tokens with my booked profit. But this was not to be. Obviously, I along with many others lost our initial investment to the RHB team.
I'm sorry to admit that I did resteem its launch post from my account which I can't undo it anymore. My apologies for it!
A fair business transaction takes care of all the parties involved and everyone gets benefited but a scammer wants to take all the advantage at the cost of others involved.
Here, I ain't alleging anyone about scamming or cheating but warning and cautioning everyone of the shady and unfair practices by this team and take extra care while dealing on this platform. But it's a fact that the RealityHubs team hasn't issued any apology for the above-said blunder so far.
Recently, they have published a post asking for Moderators specifying that they will be paid in RHB tokens but no amount or quantity has been specified.
Guys, if you're applying there, make doubly sure of what you're gonna get in return!
All the best to you!
- How do you feel about this project?
I'd like to hear your view-point on this project.
Personally, I'm still invested in this project. So I'm seriously looking for your feedback on it.
Thank you!
Hello there. This post was brought to my table while I was working to see that the community thrive to become successful. I certainly believe that we will make things work as long as we keep fighting any form of abuse.
To answer your vague questions, I want you to understand that we have no evil plot against the community and we intended to be as fair as possible towards everyone.
Indeed, the Steem-Engine team are doing a great job, however, it is sometimes hard to follow due to lack of proper documentation of the project. I find this to be very inconvenient. Although, some of the project members are around to help fix issues.
The drop in the token value is as a result of people upvoting comment as you did, and decided to sell way lower since they got the token from the self vote. Cryptos are volatile. It came down, and it may go back up because we will fight any form of abuse as much as we can as well as providing some helpful service that may cause the value of the token to rise.
You should not be surprised. the entire project is open source. So, anyone could have noticed it by going through the code: https://github.com/steem-engine-exchange/nitrous/tree/scotty_rhb
I will not share here my chat history with the Steem-Engine team. I think it is completely pointless sharing it here on anywhere with you.
That rings an alarm. You intended to abuse the system by self voting as much as you can in other to profit and get back your investment? Very ridiculous I must say. For the community to thrive, why not use your stake to reward or curate awesome content? This is the proper way to manage your investment to get a good return.
There are many projects out there that have faced several threats like this one and still survived. After they became successful, people now start to realize that they were completely wrong about what they thought was a scam. Would you believe it if I tell you that even the STEEM BLOCKCHAIN was tagged as a scammy project? Well, I will share with you an instance: https://twitter.com/tonevays/timelines/771370693212725248?lang=en
I believe that you are upset because the value of the token went down by 100%. That was not expected, but, with people selling at a price that is very low, the value will of course crash. The good thing is, a lot of people stacked their token, and I am positive the token will gain good value back gradually.
I also found this tribe is going to scam. Also this community is totally centralized. They said this is a community for review but they they are downvoting and removing the rewards from the review posts too. Thank you for making aware us about this scam. I am also going to aware people as many as i can.
You need to be aware that scammers don't scam, and wait. They scam, take funds and run away. We want the platform free of shitty posts that are not related to reviews, and we will continue to downvote such. This is a simple thing. USE THE PLATFORM FOR ONLY REVIEWS. GET THIS
Exactly! I also noted the rampant flagging from official curation account without even specifying the nature of abuse and yes, it did include review related posts too.
Thanks for your support to the issue!
Hello! Any link to a downvoted review? 😃
@xyzashu
Is this a review: https://www.realityhubs.com/cn/@honoru/008-sct-sctr-3-sct-shop ?
Hello @fknmayhem, that isn't a review. It wasn't upvoted by the team. However, now that I've found it, it has been downvoted with immediate effect. Thanks for showing me that. 😃
Thanks for swift reply and action. 👌
Found it scrolling through trending.
Just in case you find any content like that, you can report it our community-report-abuse channel on discord.
Thanks again @fknmayhem 😉
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no one downvoting reviews,
they downvoting abusers like you.
Lol. I have no intetest to talk with shitty people. I know you are a part of this scam ring.
BTW i have proof. @fn109zop
Where is the proof? You need to show the proof and justify you cry.
I am really surprised why you people invest steem in these tribes instead supporting Indian people. We can make big things.
Perhaps greed is what overpowers human tendencies at times
BTW, I ain't aware of what plans have you got for Indian community. Another tribe?
These tribes without good vision and leaders are not sustainable. We have got Ind token already but waiting for good plan. Mean while you can check @steemindian.
Posted using Partiko Android
Great! Will be checking that for sure.
Exactly the reason you should not be voted. People should be voted for thr content not ethnicity.
@mightypanda the @steemindian community is open to all. But what I am emphasis is that there are so many Indians here and I want to connect each and everyone. I want to promote steem in my country with all these members. I am also part of different steem country based projects to learn and connect with them. I have also made friends here from different countries irrespective of where they are from and what they are. Sorry if at all I bought a feel that I only support ethnicity or not properly framed my comment. Hope you have understand.
@mightypanda I concur your concerns about ethnic discrimination. In fact, I had written a post on this subject a couple of years back. I think you will enjoy reading it and add your educated opinion on the issue. Here it is:
How About Validating The Tag Spams And Promotion Of Regionalism On Steem?
I hope @hungryharish has something else to offer. That's why I told him that I'll be checking his plans.
Thank you for such an educative comment on this topic!
God bless you for this comment. You are very sensible @mightypanda
I’m just here for all the juicy juicy comments that should be bestowed on this post! I sW a few steemians shilling this new tribe already and I’ve tagged some of my posts to get into it!
Looks like SE need to have stricter protocols on tribe set ups or it reflects badly on them too
Posted using Partiko iOS
Thanks for your visit and your audience here. Unfortunately, I don't have a !drama token to offer but I think I can offer you some !popcorn for sure. Enjoy your stay!
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Even some steemians call aggroed all sort of names. No matter how good or bad something is, it will get both negative and positive compliments. That's your opinion. Many still trust the project. I'm surprised you are still tagging realityhubs in your post when you already warn people to stay clear of the project.
You said it! You are free to your own opinion based on the available facts. If you know of some strong facts in support of this project, I'm more than willing to give you an ear. But you can't deny what turned out so far!
FYI, this post was tagged and promoted in realityhubs community to give exposure to that community. And I don't see any harm in using the tag if it gives an opportunity to curators who have already invested their money in it. It's good to recover whatever you can! I was also hoping for some corrective measures from the promoters of this community but so far it's disappointing.
hmm?
you saw big votes, saw big numbers and a "high" value of STEEM on the token and thought for yourself "I will earn thousands here" and realized just like all of the other tribes they went down for the real value for their post payouts and realized you'll not be a millionare and just go to the community and tell them it's a scam, hhh, man, it's not.
Of course! If you ain't an opportunist and can't make the best of the market ethically when you can, then you shouldn't be in the market for the purpose of earning profit from it! If the market had behaved the way it would organically, I won't had complained here. But you are missing the whole point. The fact is that team tried to manipulate the market prices by intentionally disabling the users to claim their earnings for a good amount of initial rush period. Can you justify such an action?
I don't know where are you, but at the world of tribe, every tribe starts at a base price and most of the times goes down for few weeks, maybe months.
btw, no one disabled the claiming rewards, it was a bug with steem-engine, I checked it out.
Will you please provide the details of how and what exactly you checked?
Will you please provide
The details of how and what
Exactly you checked?
- xyzashu
I'm a bot. I detect haiku.
you know, you can talk with steem-engine mods.
I have my full trust and belief in this project. Thank you for your intuitive opinion though. We live In a democratic world where Everybody is entitled to their own opinion.
thank you very much man. One love
Here's a few sentences for you @xyzashu; being quick to conclude is very wrong. The title of this post already proves that you really didn't think twice before making your post.
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Thanks for your feedback! Would love to hear out your thoughts and facts that went into consideration for making out this comment.
You're just misunderstanding realityhubs. Try to understand what realityhubs is. It has a simple explanation. In fact, try making a post from the realityhubs platform and you'll notice what the box says.
Posted using Partiko Android
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True, it doesn't matter whatever the purpose was. But they don't even have the guts to reveal that too as an excuse! I don't know how they are going to win the confidence back if they want to move ahead with this community!