What the WEKU is going on?steemCreated with Sketch.

in #weku5 years ago (edited)

Service completely down?

And yet another Steem/ Whaleshares clone came to life.

Just one witness, again?

So far I have seen a bunch of Steem spin offs that I really think are truly unique. First of all there is Golos, that evolved into its own unique kind of platform. With Scorum covering sports and Smoke being cannabis themed, two more interesting forks were added. And with Whaleshares the Steem concept took a different turn. Aimed at Stake and growing slowly but steady.

But just like with other Cryptos and ICOs {Innitial Coin Offerings} there also are forking projects that can be considered highly questionable. Some could even turn out to be Scams. One of those highly questionable platforms seems to be WeKu. Shortly after, what this platform called, the presale ICO the website went offline. And no more Ethereum based ERC20 Tokens could be bought.

There already had been complaints about the price being set too high for WeKu members. Another thing that struck me as being a bit strange was an ICO afterwards. Just like there was only one witness, owned by the WeKu-Team. No internal market that worked. Frontpage presented Teammembers and advisors that were hard to get confirmed as really being part of this project. It all looked like a quickly done mash-up.

Hidden domain renter

The WeKu domain was apparantly hosted by an American company. And the domain had a hidden privacy setting. That is okay to use, except for most businesses this is considered not done. So, who is really behind the WeKu project? That is open for debate, but I'll leave that for what it is. As currently there is not much to be gained in speculating about it. WeKu could still turn back on. With witnesses being enabled.

The way it took off was by handing out free WeKu just for signing up and referring others. And this system of spreading out WeKu amongst the members got abused very badly. It created instant self enriching Whale accounts. Some of them also 'well known' here at Steem. It almost gave me the strong impression that some of them actually were involved more than the outside would have made us believe.

One after another?

Of course it is to expect that Open Source projects can also be forked off into a scam. That does not state anything about it being bad in itself. Although scammers do like to point the finger of guilt to their victims. As if it was their own fault for being ... Where you can fill in any kind of attack, theft or abuse on the dots. Wrongdoing as a way of living. And others should just protect themselves against them. As we live in the jungle, so are its laws, right?

Strangly enough some of those, who seem to belief that the only law being the one of the jungle, seem to have booted up yet another Steem clone. Looking more pro then WeKu, yet still seems to have been a search-and-replace forking Steem clone. Taking the Whaleshares name and adding another animal to it. One being apparantly connected to a spyware infested piece of p2p sharing software. Now all we have to wait for is a Bullwhales fork of Steem...

Be critical

Now I really have no clue what will happen with WeKu. It started off with 400 million WeKu issued up front and would try and sell another 400 million ERC20 tokens for Ethereum. That is 800 million within a year. And with inflation set at 10% recently that would create 80 million new WeKu every year? Somehow the math did not add up here. Was it done by some people who honestly did not know how this should have been done? Or was it done as a kind of hit and run scam?

Some facts that made WeKu at least questionable were the lack of transparancy, only one controlled witness, non working internal market, clearly badly performed search-n-replace fork, many defect links, bad economics, ICO afterwards, no blockchain explorer, unclear who is/was behind the project and looters being hailed as community savers and accepted as curators.

The opposite of Bullshares

Now, I'd have to admit that it does have a smelly stinch, to state the least. And if you might be temped, as a former WeKunian, to move over to the 'Shorters' version of Bullshares, then first look for some signs that might have you think twice. It also has only one witness, for instance and it uses the SteemIt copyrighted logo. Some trivial links do end up dead and it looks a lot like another search-n-replace forking Steem clone. (Be carefull buying an account, your money might be lost.)

There is no exchange on Blocktrades for it, nor on GDEX. Yep, it is a very bad executed, as if done in a hurry, search-n-replace forking Steem clone. Which lacks a lot of transparancy. And if you take the time to look at who is what at that platform you might have an 'Aha' moment. Yes, I left out their names here, just like I leave out the name of that questionable forking Steem clone. As there is no such thing as bad advertising.

DYOR

Do your own research {DYOR}, that is basicly what I would want to advise you. Maybe I am somehow biased against those questionable forking Steem clones. But as there are some clearly connected to a few well known scammers and system abusers I urge you to DYOR. Because some of them seemed to be stuck in their view of reality as being ruled by the law of the jungle. And I have learned from my lessons in life that those people cannot be trusted, ever.

Sometimes I wished I was totally wrong about these kind of things. But then reality bites and it hits me in the face. Luckily there also are a lot of fellow human beings that proof there is a lot to be thankfull for in this reality. Yet it seems like a healthy thing to do to be a bit critical now and then. And if something seems to be to good to be true, it often proves itself to be.

Have a great one!


If only scammers would look like this...
pirate-1827387_1920.jpg
Image license CC0, source: Pixabay

Sort:  

So the hunch we both had the other day didn't just fell out of the sky.

(btw, haven't really had the time to dive into the other "alternatives". Too busy with work and settling down in my new home. There's still stuff (already a week) waiting for me to be picked up from my old home)

Somehow I am afraid our hunch was indeed right, unfortunately...

(First things first mate. These other blockchains will be there for a while longer.)

dat vraag ik ook
beter in steem focusen toch ? :D

#nl Er zijn nu al zoveel Steem klonen, beter focus richten op een à twee platformen. Dat is al genoeh uitdaging. :-)

As soon as I see that there isn't a functioning block explorer I am like yeek!!

That is usually a bad sign...

Very much so!!! I think I in fact learned that from you :0)

Same freakin' questions I was asking!

God help you if you ask these questions on WEKU-Discult servers!

That is typical behaviour of a system that seems to hide something.

I tried to create an account there, I needed to give them my mobile phone number, no messages ever arrived. I concluded right there that weku sucks, and it is not ready for anything.

That adds to the list of highly questionable things connected to that platform.

Even forgot to add that it was closed sourced, so far...

I thought it would do better, odd it just disappeared like that.

https://smoke.io/@cryplectibles is still up and awesome

https://golos.blog/@cryplectibles is so advanced it no longer even looks like Steemit anymore

It is sad for those who started using it hoping it would be a chance for them to earn a real Crypto for their publications. Hope it will work out for the them.

Smoke is an unique Steem fork that delivers.

And Golos developed into a substantive platform. Even though I have an account there I find it hard to read Russian / Ukranian. ;-)

And Golos developed into a substantive platform. Even though I have an account there I find it hard to read Russian / Ukranian. ;-)

I have had an account forever and have no idea how to cash out lol, I just sit in awe of it's pretty UI.

Put the link in Google Translate, that could help.

Rudex has a market for Golos. https://market.rudex.org/#/
(If you have a Bitshares account you can log in there.)

The interface is indeed very good looking.

I had started an account on WeKu, put a few weeks worth of work into it, but the more I watched and read and learned, the more scammy it seemed and I haven't touched it since.

The absolute worst posts were making tons of money, but nobody had any idea how to cash out, or any way to figure out VESTS or how to know how much WeKu was actually worth.

When I started, my very first day, my vote was worth $0.77!!! Then, after I had accumulated a bit, it dropped to $0.19 with no explanation as to how the prices were fluctuating so dramatically.

It seems WeKu started off very different than its 'parent' Steem did. Too many questions, no real answers. For me it ended with the offline page, even though it is now back in action. Hope for those who put their trust in WeKu that it at least will work out for them.

Had this guy that was stealing my photography and posting on Weku. Even the text I had with the photo saying he photographed it on the Rideau River in Canada... dude was a scammer from Pakistan or some place like that.... Weku was 90 % Scammers.

Posted using Partiko iOS

There was a lot of that going on overthere. Without getting resolved.

It's back up again. Still looking for changes, if any.

Well, maybe it will move onwards into the right direction. Had a quick look, did not notice anything different so far.

I pretty much assume everything in crypto is a scam unless proven otherwise. Guilty until proven innocent is not a bad default setting to live by in the crypto world. I have an account, but I am not overly excited or do I have any expectations about it. I saw similar things happen with steem in the early days starting with overly complex mining for a short time. You can never tell what will happen in the crypto world

That is another way to look at it. :-) Not innocent until proven guilty, but the other way around.

There are a lot of scams in the Cryptos realm, I think that is absolutely true. Keeping a healthy suspicion towards anything or anyone might be a sound suggestion when getting into Cryptos.

And even then sometimes the first hunch still could be wrong. Nevertheless it seems best to go about things in a realistic manor. That already is a challenge.

As I might be right about my WeKu doubts, I still might be proven wrong. For those who put their trust in WeKu I hope I have to state I was wrong, or at least for the most part.

Yet be aware, always, that something might be a project just ment to scam. When it looks to good to be true, it almost always is.

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.35
TRX 0.12
JST 0.040
BTC 70733.96
ETH 3563.16
USDT 1.00
SBD 4.76