WARNING: Be cautious when creating new communities
Hello dear Steemians,
Yesterday I saw the post by hotspotitaly about the user @ponpase who is as an owner of Master keys of two communities changed the keys and now Powering them down:
- @hive-163291, Steemit Travel, Power Down started 3 days ago
- @steem-database Steem Marketing, Power Down started 13 days ago
We have discussed that in Booming discord but also you can see the comments under the post:
We had a long discussion how to prevent that in the future that single user can do that, there were many opinions because many factors play its role, one of the important one:
- Human factor and honesty
In the whole story with those two communities it was one user who cheated everyone that is @ponpase.
I knew him because he was once selected to be Steemcurator and he was in my Team, therefore, I already knew his attitude and alerted Steemit Team.
I was not surprised when I heard that he previously had managed tricked out other people and created communities that accumulated Steem with the trust of the Steemit Team and then the users and communities disappeared.
Therefore, I wanted to remind everyone about that and show how clever the user is and what we need to pay attention in the future.
*When going back and reviewing the projects where @ponpase was involved, automatically we are coming to these three names and @arie.steem @pojan, @ponpase. There is a lot in common and who knows if that is one person or a group of people who decided to create the communities, gain trust of the Steemit Team and then cash out Steem and leave.
@arie.steem had account in 2017, but after split stopped blogging and re-started about 2 years ago with Steem Promotion.
When that was seen and supported by @steemcurator01 the users decided to go further and create an a promotion account
and this account:@steemcoffeeshop
Once again with trust of Steemit Team the account started to grow:
What happened to the users and projects? |
|---|
@arie.steem has stopped activity 2 years ago and now there is only 30 Steem on account, withdrawn 14.230 Steem, if you pay attention to the Memo Number 103866497 that number you will see often
@pojan is another user who is not posting for about a year and his account now has 27 Steem and he has withdrawn 10K Steem
Now to the accounts that were created for Vote-Farming, again look at the Memo Number which is the same like in previous withdrawals. Currently @promosteem.com account has only 31 Steem
Withdrawn 30K Steem
What about @steemcoffeeshop, it is only 5 Steem left:
Withdrawn 11.500Steem:
As to @ponpase he has his Steem Power about 22K delegated to @abb-curation that is why he will not withdraw anything yet but will farm votes through Upvote-per-Delegation service
Multi-sign wallet for new communities
As the result of discussion we came across to the post of @rexthetech about Multi-sign wallet, when in order to close down or Power Down an account it will require two or more people, please see link below:
https://steemit.com/hive-102132/@rexthetech/steem-multisig-wizard-update
There is no magic tool and advise what to do to prevent such cases, this is very human that if there is a possibility to get easy money people might get temped. At the every individual and every case is different, when creating community make sure that everyone has the same goal and there because of the sake of community. Hope that then will work
Hope the post will reach many and hope we have learnt from that example
I had some disputes with him in the past, but they revolved around very different points of view and opinions. Normal, that is. Apart from that, I thought he was committed and trustworthy. Until a few weeks ago, when he was called out for various things - when Steem Rep only had four or six comments a week and they were mainly in the form of smilies... Looked at the account and realised that he was, shall we say, overrated. That there are so many more unpleasant things to report surprises and disappoints me...
I think the user has great experience of how Steemit works and how to make it work for yourself. It is sad that he gained trust of many through his attitude of asking for support. Sad.
... and then I see great writers who engage, who interact - and who really have something to say. Unfortunately, some of them don't get much attention/support at the moment because they don't fulfil any club conditions and may have to live off their modest income here. As an example, I would like to mention @mercurysys, who is a wonderful enrichment in Dream Steem. Of course there are many more...
I noticed @mercurysys, very good blog and images that is what attracted me. The problem is the user withdrawing and there is no Power Up, unfortunately.
Also, it is difficult to know the ownership of images, if own then would be good to have Website address or for example social media where person shows them up. Also there is no country. I believe all the combination makes Curators to skip this user, which is a shame.
I also agree there are many more users who are not seen..
Yes, I understand your explanation. Nevertheless, it is sad. I don't have a country listed on my account either - I just write openly about the fact that I'm based in Germany. Like mercurysys about being from Venezuela ;-)) What he does there, at which events he appears... I don't use other Social Media as well... He takes steem for his living - because it is existential. That's what I do too, by the way ;-)) For me it is not quite so existential, I pay attention to the club5050 condition and power up: because I find it important and right. In support - and this time I explicitly mean high votes ;-)) - I have not been lacking from the beginning... What remains is the stale feeling that double standards are being applied and that someone who is clearly worse off than the curators themselves is being kept down additionally.
I know you try a lot and stand up for a lot of people: I definitely don't mean you personally! More so the curation system as a whole. So thank you for listening and understanding ;-))
I think steemit team should verify each steemit user via video call in discord as an interview, this way none can create farming account.
I wonder that @ponpase can do this because he was a good friend of mine and we are connected in this platform and discord for long time. I'm glad that I was not part of his community as mod or something as he offered me once for it. I was unable to run my own community for timing and trust issues so I refused to be a community partner. I took the best decision I guess. He should share reward with community mods as I saw them working hard for his community. He can't grab all reward like a dishonest.
To tell the truth, Steem is decentralised blockchain, that means everyone is free to do what they like, normally nobody can force people for example to do their selfie.
@ponpase has done couple of such selfies but this did not guarantee that he cheated people:
https://steemit.com/hive-144064/@ponpase/my-self-verification-in-the-beauty-of-creativity-community
Anyway, you are lucky that you stay away from him, it is dishonest to take all the rewards especially when he is still posting through his acocunt
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This is part of why I'm not a fan of crowd-funded curation accounts for communities (unless it is self-funded by the community owner). I've seen too many "rug pulls" like this over the years. I definitely believe that it would be preferable if community members would support their communities by voting directly with their own SP.
You're right about multisig. If the new tool from @rexthetech makes that easy, then people should be skeptical of any community who is using a crowd-funded curation account that's not set up with multisig authentication. It doesn't solve all problems, because the multisig account could still be diverted from its intended/advertised purpose, but it helps a lot.
Thank you for taking time and visiting this post. I fully understand what you mean and yes, agree, when the account is self-funded then often it has long life. I also agree that the community members should support others with their voting, that also lets people to communicate and to do more manual upvoting.
As to multisign, who knows how it will in practice, it is something new and the communities with many users who come together and start from scratch working may find it useful and save. But on other hand when creating a community everyone should have the same goal and not only to enjoy the benefits of the Steemit Team that is offered for communities and their Moderators.
This is actually a shame for us and this platform. I don't know how many more people will come to this place. At least those who get more support from 01, 02, their verification is more important. Earlier the Indonesian one did. Those who are holding many large frames on this platform are now more suspicious.
Thank you very much for sharing with us.
There is no guarantee and prevention of such situation, even if person had been verified like in this case. We all know that people need some financing support and it is allowed to withdraw some Steem, but when the person decides to take something that was earned with the combined efforts of others that is a bad feature of a person. Of course, we have to trust people but hope the users also will be honest with others.
Thank you for reading my post.
You are right we have to be honest.
It's really disappointing. One person take out all the power and now other's who were working in those communities also effeted badly. Steemit should set some parameters in order to support a community. Thanks to you for this details.
Yes, such situation may happen and unfortunately, not really a single case.
Kudos keep the good work
Thank you very much. To present it to us like this.