There are so many blockchain social platforms out there that are awesome and so many more that are scams, shams, and full of spam. Let’s dive into what you should avoid.
Recently I’d posted on Twitter in response to Whaleshares claiming to be a great blockchain platform saying it was a scam and they wanted proof. While I’m at it I figured I’d cover some other less than honest platforms and or ones you’re better off avoiding entirely. I will also briefly mention some of the platforms that closed down last year.
Also, a quick shoutout to YouTube creators who are struggling with the new changes around commercial viability – check out LBRY, Steem, DTube, Bitchute, Gab, Flote, Cent, Cos.TV, UGetTube, OpenTube, TokenTuber, Minds, Uptrennd, and Sapien.
On top of covering Whaleshares which is the main focus, I will quickly go over Weku’s failure, Bearshares outright resetting everyone’s holdings, and why DLive is a scam and you should avoid it. Here’s one of my main explanations about DLive:
This is everything I could find. Mind you, this happened over a year ago. Also note that Narrative was essentially a scam and is done:
and recently Hyperspace also closed down.
Not but a few months later they all stopped supporting this and dropped their support for their own tokens making them lose all value and basically scamming anyone dumb enough to invest in them like me. Mind you, I do this to test out new platforms to see if they are scams etc., so it’s fine. I had earned about 14,000 Whaleshares before this happened just from witness votes.
Now the issue I had was only with the few I tested out and used, but these were top witnesses at the time. I also addressed this to the staff and friends of the staff and they said something along the lines of “yes it’s controversial and we have disagreements amongst the witnesses, but it’s happening.”
These are the known witnesses who had “Whaletokens” then stopped abruptly making the token worth nothing.
https://whaleshares.io/@ienrikex – MILK
https://whaleshares.io/@milkbox.tutorial/how-to-get-rewards-from-a-whale-in-whaleshares-with-milk
https://whaleshares.io/@milkbox.info/milk-as-a-whaletoken-how-where-get-in-project-milkbox
https://whaleshares.io/@nepd – HAIRSHARES
https://whaleshares.io/@fiasteemproject – FSTSH (The Goon)
Unfortunately, other than my trading history sending back and forth with these witnesses I don’t have much other evidence. Discord deleted my conversations more than a year old so I couldn’t get anything on the witness who sold FSTSH known as FIATSTEEM or “The Goon.” I did however find a post he made on Smoke.io that backed up what I’m claiming: https://smoke.io/introduceyourself/@fiasteem/a-brief-defination-of-fstsh and on Steem: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@fiasteem/a-brief-defination-of-fstsh. His real name is Pranish Ghimire. This is “The Goon” - https://twitter.com/_PranishGhimire
In the posts above for the FSTSH token, it says “The votes are sponsored by our Awesome Friend Darren Claxton.”
You can see the votes given to me in 2019 and 2018 on my block explorer to corroborate this and the huge votes from 
Let me know what you think, but the conclusion I came to was any attempt at rebooting Steem was really an attempt at getting the early profits that Steemians made and not about improving the platform or making a better alternative.
Here you can see that even the staff haven’t posted in over a year: https://deals.weku.io/@weku-team. Here are several posts by them detailing the scammers and issues on the platform: https://deals.weku.io/community-deals/@weku-official/announcement-multiple-accounts-to-collect-bonus-not-ku-cool
https://deals.weku.io/community-deals/@ijoel/spam-scam-phishing-abuse-become-the-biggest-threat-that-must-be-fighted
https://deals.weku.io/community-deals/@weku-team/fake-accounts
https://deals.weku.io/community-deals/@fang/regarding-the-issue-of-automatic-account-registration-using-bots-notice-from-the-weku-team
So apparently, they had issues with bots registering, phishing, and scams running rampant on the platform according to the staff themselves. It didn’t last long as most people left the platform. While there are still users on here trying to earn enough to recoup their losses, I can bet it’s a tiny portion of people.
Not only that, but their registration process is the most tedious and cumbersome of any platform in existence. You need to do full KYC, take photos, give your ID, and do a liveliness test with a video just to sign up. They say this will remove any potential for fake or bot accounts, but it also prevents any anonymity whatsoever or any companies or non-human profiles. They think the future of social is a highly centralized, highly monitored one. They want to use blockchain and yet think YouTube and Facebook actually don’t do enough.
I did an interview with the CEO and founder and I thought maybe it had the slightest of chances, but then he lied and said that there are over 50,000 users and tons of people posting and when I got on and looked at the discover section, there were only posts by him and a couple of staff. He just wanted to create hype from our interview, so I didn’t post it. It was actually the first and only interview I’ve ever held due to misinformation.
It’s not a scam, but it’s not something you should trust with all that personal information when they’re willing to lie and act dishonestly while forcing you to give them all the control and access.
The co-founder explains in this post how Bilal the other co-founder stole all of Noganoo’s funds and screwed him out of his funds in the platform: https://deals.weku.io/community-deals/@noganoo/warning-accounts-are-being-seized-by-bearshares-founder-and-scammer-bilal-haider-do-not-buy-into-the-bearshares-scam
Mind you, old posts on Weku don’t support stored images so a lot of the screenshots are gone, so you can take it as you will.
Bearshares it widely known for scams and abusing its own users. I have not resigned up because apparently he’s also been able to seize people’s passwords and abuse that elsewhere so I highly recommend avoiding this platform at all costs even more so than anywhere else.
Justin’s tweet:
https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1211683179326824450
- justinsuntron
https://twitter.com/OfficialDLive/status/1211682578345803776
- OfficialDLive
They also added another awful requirement that you must stream at least 3 days and 8 hours on DLive to be eligible to get paid/withdraw your own purchased funds.
I will be doing a new video on this very soon as well. Everything below is in relation to their existence on Lino and doesn’t speculate or take into account what they might do on Tron. Either way though, 3 blockchain network migrations is more than too many. It’s all about buying up PewDiePie’s influence.
DLive Is Overly Centralized And Misleading -
This was the original video I made covering Dlive:
Every time I have gone back and taken another look at DLive, it’s always more centralized than before. I don’t know what people are missing. minimum withdrawals, ID to withdraw, huge purchasing fees, not listed on an exchange, pro-censorship, and Lino is not a “real” cryptocurrency.
I didn’t think I’d have to make another video pointing this out, but as DLive continues to grow and more people seem to believe the publisher is using the blockchain or at the very least that is decentralized while both are not the case. I will give them that they seem to be making use of the blockchain to some small degree, but everything about it is still centralized. Out of the very few validators (witnesses), they have 7 out of 11 are owned by DLive, so that isn’t very promising either. They do have a lot more information on their blockchain here: https://docs.lino.network/blockchain/account.html
It has a better value proposition than Twitch with no platform cuts, but with everything else and especially for those buying Lino points, it’s a scam. Don’t buy on mobile to avoid their 30% fees! I almost never make videos and content bashing a platform directly, but honestly, PewDiePie is attracting so much attention there and everyone is being misled. I feel that making this video is necessary to keep people in the know and aware of what’s going on.
You can see this all for yourself on their site: https://dlive.tv/
You can find their April Lino point purchase fee update here: https://community.dlive.tv/2019/04/03/lino-points-purchase-fee-update/
This was my latest video detailing this issue:
It’s also really important to consider how much of EOS is centralized in terms of where it’s held and who controls the majority in China. People have also been concerned about EOS being too centralized. The majority of EOS is held by entities in China prompting fears of state intervention
Considering it had a 4.1 billion-dollar ICO, it is pretty ridiculous how poorly the DApp market has evolved and many developers haven’t been able to make money contributing to the network demotivating and disincentivizing them to continue doing so.
Block.one is the company that launched the code is the largest token holder and could easily redefine the governance of the chain at any time which again is centralized, and they don’t bother to.
EOS founder was forced to pay 24 million dollars to the SEC and you can find one article on this here: https://coincodex.com/article/5339/eos-developer-blockone-agrees-to-pay-24-million-fine-following-sec-settlement-a-slap-on-the-wrist/. I suggest checking out this article for more information on this: https://www.coindesk.com/everyones-worst-fears-about-eos-are-proving-true
I just recently shared this regarding TRON & EOS:
Below are some of my previous videos on EOS platforms:
My first EOS dapp review:
My follow up EOS dapp review:
My final re-review of EOS dapps:
These are just some questions to consider. I will always be out there testing platforms in this space on your behalf. I will be investing some money and putting considerable time into each major platform to fully test them out and share my findings in my comprehensive reviews that I update and put out every 3 months or so. You can find my last review here on Minds and also on many other platforms: https://www.minds.com/scottcbusiness/blog/comprehensive-blockchain-social-media-platforms-review-iv-1038934439106088960
Let me know what you think about this in the comments below and don’t forget to subscribe!
Also, a quick shoutout to YouTube creators who are struggling with the new changes around commercial viability – check out LBRY, Steem, DTube, Bitchute, Gab, Flote, Cent, Cos.TV, UGetTube, OpenTube, TokenTuber, Minds, Uptrennd, and Sapien.
@scottcbusiness