Audit Update

The Audit Consultation Tool (ACT) is online and ready for you!

It's as easy as 1, 2, 3:

1. Go to http://audit.vivacoin.io/
2. Enter your VIVA/TQ ID number where indicated
3. Choose which currency group you would like to view and click on “Submit.”

To view the transactions for a particular currency, just click on that currency
(Suggestion: right-click and open in a new tab).

It's that simple.

What do the different balances mean?

TQ Balance: With absolute certainty, we have proven the balances within TradeQwik's database to be wrong, except for a handful of accounts with either very few or no transactions. In our research, we have found that the TradeQwik staff did their best to right wrongs by refunding failed withdrawals and posting other manual transactions. Doing this, even in good faith, caused issues within the TQ database, and in some cases, certain account holders had taken advantage of double refund deposits which we will explain below.

It is because of these factors that the TQ Balance is not taken as a factor in the audit; it is only there for reference. For transparency, we decided to keep it in the ACT to compare it to what you probably saw on January 4, 2018 (our audit cut-off). We say “probably” because we do not know, with absolute certainty, what you saw, which is why you've been encouraged early in the process to take a snapshot of your TQ account and gather your gateway transactions for comparison.

The Transactions Balance is the balance according to the transactions, and is the balance TQ should have been showing. It is not the true balance, however. Several of the transactions were found to be erroneous, yet still affected the Transactions Balance.

Audited Balance is the True Balance. The Audited Balance includes transactions confirmed on the blockchain plus manual transactions which were correctly applied. These are the provable transactions which do not include failed transactions or unconfirmed manual ones.

So, when you view the ACT, remember:

• The TQ balance is only there for reference.
• The Transactions balance is what TQ should have shown, though still likely to be wrong.
• The Audited Balance is the true balance for your account.

If you still see something amiss, you will be able to contact the auditors once you receive an email from them.

Were there really “bugs” in the TQ system?

We have noticed two distinct “bugs” which have affected the TQ database.

Bug #1: ONE Bug, FOUR Big Problems

As with all exchanges, within the code is a routine to automatically refund failed withdrawals, or remove the amount for a failed deposit. This is necessary to help keep the system running automatically. In TQ, this was a condition called a thread deadlock; some transactions got stuck and failed withdrawals weren't getting automatically refunded after a certain length of time (Problem-A). Therefore, account holders were calling TQ support and the support personnel were issuing manual refunds. This was all well and good until the system went through a maintenance cycle or was rebooted.

It was during the maintenance cycle or reboot that the system scanned for failed transactions and automatically refund failed withdrawals and reduced the balances for failed deposits. Essentially, it recognized the manual compensation some of the time. Unfortunately, not all failed transactions would be found and rectified and this routine was not at all consistent. (Problem-B)

Additionally, because of the failure to recognize manual transactions, the routine also did not recognize corrections which, in some cases, caused double deposits (Problem-C). Thankfully this didn't happen all the time but the inconsistencies made it very difficult to track what was happening and pinpoint the problem.

One of the biggest issues and another reason this bug was not quickly found was because when the system changed a balance, it did not provide a line item transaction record (Problem-D). The balance was simply being updated with no record of it being done. Any time a balance changes, a line item record is supposed to show why.

Bug #2:
Another “bug” is not actually a bug but rather operator error. Our findings revealed a “fat fingered moment” in the database and subsequent attempt to manually recover the mistake when SBD or STEEM was added to nearly all TQ accounts. This was a one-time occurrence.

Audited accounts are under final review!

We have been auditing accounts in order of the greatest amount of discrepancy. The discrepancy is the difference between what the TradeQwik database shows as the balance and the balance calculated by the transactions in the account.

For instance, if the TQ database shows $10,000.00 USD to be the balance, but when we add up the actual transactions, the balance shows the account should have $10,005.42 USD, that is a $5.42 discrepancy.

In contrast, if the TQ database shows an account to hold $10.47 USD, but the transactions show that account should have $5,432.99 USD, that is a discrepancy of $5,422.52.

We will contact you.

At this point we ask that you become proactive. Compare your account with the findings in the ACT. If something doesn't look right please make a note of it. Most of you will be receiving emails shortly with our findings for your account. At that point, we will provide a form which states you agree (or disagree) with the findings which will either forward your account to VIVA Holdings LLC directly or back into the Audit queue.

Please remember, as auditors our role is to research and confirm the numbers with the highest degree of accuracy as possible. We are not responsible for the distribution or collection of funds.

Our Progress

Emails are going out this week.
For your review, here are the discrepancy brackets which are going through final review:

Over $50K - - - 15 accounts
$10K to $50K – 20 accounts
$5K to $10K - - 12 accounts
$1K to $5K - - - 31 accounts
$100 TO $1k - 46 accounts

Below are the discrepancy brackets which will not be reviewed unless a formal request is submitted.
$1 to $99.99 - - 656 accounts
Less than $1 - - 29 accounts
$0 - - - - - - - - - 448 accounts

To put it nicely, the TQ database was less than perfect and we expected differences between the stated and audited balances. These “bugs” may have caused some transactions to fall into negative balances. The Audit Team has been authorized to forgive accounts with discrepancy amounts of $99.99 or less and those accounts will not be audited unless specifically requested by the account owner. Conversely, if your audited amount is greater than what the initial transactions showed, TQ will honor the higher amount. If you are within the +/- $99.99 group, you will receive an acknowledgement form from the TQ Audit Team and your account will be forwarded to VIVA Holdings with next steps in recovering your account assets.

Account holders with a discrepancy of $100.00 or greater will be emailed individually. Be sure to check the SPAM or JUNK folder as these emails are directed to the address from which you opened your TradeQwik account. There are 124 accounts with discrepancies of $100 to $10,000 requiring individual attention. We are diligently reaching out to everyone as quickly as possible.

Finally

As these audits come to a conclusion, so do our roles as auditors. Future public announcements will be coming directly from VIVA Holdings. Audit-related communications will be limited to emailing account holders. We thank you for your incredible patience and support.