"Charity Engine" Controversy

There has been a lot of discussion in the last couple of days regarding Charity Engine after this post by @dutch

https://steemit.com/gridcoin/@dutch/exposing-the-pomegranate-botnet

I've previously commented on that post and it raised some concerns with me, however I have been doing some digging and so thought I should post my own thoughts on the matter.

What are the facts?

1. Charity Engine is a for profit business registered under the name "THE WORLDWIDE COMPUTER COMPANY LIMITED" in the UK
   Company Details: link
   Accounts: link

2. Charity Engine utilises an old modified Boinc client, it is not clear if the version used is 7.0.80 or 7.0.76

3. Users of Charity Engine run both regular BOINC work and commercial work that Charity Engine are paid to process, Charity Engine has also experimented with mining cryptocurrencies using their client.

4. Charity Engine claim to pay users 33% of profits in the form of a prize draw, 33% to charities and they keep 33% for themselves. Also bare in mind that this is out of profits, any wages/dividends/loans/shares etc the company issues come out before profit.

5. During 2017, Charity Engine has paid out a $1000 prize to users on average every 3-4 months and has paid out $4000 this year in total according to their website.
   https://www.charityengine.com/news

6. There is no record of what charitable donations have been made as this information hasn't been released however there is evidence of a $3000 donation to Oxfam here
   https://www.oxfam.org.uk/get-involved/fundraising/supporter-stars/fundraising-blog/2017/04/charity-engine

7. Charity Engine has been collecting Gridcoin during this year for the Boinc computations their users have completed using the name "Pomegranate"

8. The Pomegranate user is currently earning $6000 per month @ current GRC prices ($0.05/GRC). At earlier lower prices of $0.02-0.03/GRC Pomegranate would be earning $2400 - $3600 per month

Conclusions

Is Charity Engine Malware?

In my opinion there is no clear evidence that Charity Engine is any kind of Malware or Botnet. However...

There is some evidence that Charity Engine deploys it's software through dubious yet legal methods such as bundling. This type of "marketing" prays on those that are not computer savvy and generally these users will not know they are running the software.

This opinion is based upon the complete lack of any community discussion or user activity around the internet despite a claimed number of downloads in the millions and number of enrolled computers in the hundreds of thousands. It would be extremely unusual for there to be no discussion around Charity Engine when it is claimed to be much larger than Boinc itself.

If more evidence surfaces, I reserve the right to alter this opinion.

Is Charity Engine worth using?

In my opinion no and I would encourage other people to avoid it for the following reasons.

1. It is not clear if Charity Engine meet their claimed commitments to charities and users as they are not open about their accounts.
   • The company does give some profits to charities and users, the amount however is a matter of trust.
2. The abbreviated unaudited accounts for the company for 2016 show that the company technically makes a loss year on year thanks to some creative accounting.
   • This means they could decide not to pay anything to charities or users and still be honest, this in my opinion is intentionally misleading.
   • The company has negligible assets, everything is tied up with "Creditors" presumably as a tax avoidance (legal) strategy

With these points in mind it is my opinion that Charity Engine is not an ethical company and is syphoning cash from users and charities for their own benefit, however what they do appears to remain legal.

It could be argued that it once had its day but with blockchain technology and its trustless decentralised model it is much better for both users and charities to run Boinc directly and claim Gridcoin for themselves or through the GRCPool. GRCPool only takes a nominal fee as operating costs (and in my opinion shows how inflated Charity Engines costs are)

Users can then donate as much as they want to charities of their choice cutting out the middle man.

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Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings. If you have found this post useful please consider upvoting, resteeming and/or following me.

Gridcoin: Rx5iQUC9fdZkYuxrjW6ySV6Jfttsw5Ub2L
Bitshares: g-uk https://wallet.bitshares.org/?r=g-uk
Ethereum: 0x734E41c433DE29383957A80dc57B8D025dd326b5

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