@sndbox's postings looked very neat and also looked like he was doing lots of projects that appear to be popular. And he may be doing all of those as they seem.
However, apart from that, he is doing another business that he never mentions anywhere in his postings.
And that is a voting business that runs based on membership fee.
You give 40 SBD a month to him and you will get very high returns.
Here are the IDs of 95 people who are using this service. I got this info from @sndbox’s wallet and the transactions only show back to 17 days. So I assume there are more than 95 IDs who subscribe.
I have no relationship with these people and I have no intention of accusing these people, either.
I just want to share the info with everybody and talk about whether this behavior is OK or not.
Like I said, all the information is a public disclosure. Anybody who is curious will be able to find this info and sort them out like I did.
@shortcut @carrotcake @dontstopmenow @errymil @kr-collegeclub
@fingersik @soyo @reddragonfly @heymattsokol @cloh76
@levycore @abduhawab @nairadaddy @tata1 @world-travel-pro
@steeminator3000 @ezgibaki @theghost1980 @coloringiship @dreamiely
@roused @mintvilla @jrswab @leesongyi @aaronli
@sireh @asbonclz @fathin-shihab @howtostartablog @luvabi
@ayijufridar @dunsky @maverickfoo @mrblinddraw @playitforward
@jaff8 @fakire1sadaka @eurogee @bearone @bree1042
@hknyasar @leaky20 @steemitph @aaronleang @teachblogger
@meanmommy33 @themanualbot @leesol @yoon @zuma
@kemal13 @osm0sis @jassennessaj @smaeunabs @deveerei
@paolobeneforti @silviabeneforti @elizacheng @kenan1989 @kalvas
@monomyth @alvinauh @myego13 @zord189 @erb
@crypto3d @leotrap @vitruvianman @lazariko12
(transactions between members and @sndbox)
There is no obligation of law here. We follow our morality which works as laws here in Steemit.
The comment field below is wide open to everyone who wants to add their opinions, to complain or even protest.
Steemit that I picture is a healthy place where each of us, is individually decentralized without creating centralized power. Only thing we want to centralize is our empathy and companionship, not money.
In my personal judgement, I am concerned that it could do me any harm eventually that all these members make @sndbox create the money pool and they get higher rewards in return, considering the members are getting benefits on almost all of their postings.
I am writing this post so that I would know if my judgement is right or wrong.
To me, Steemit is a great way to encourage myself to write about my stories and to also help others to write about their stories. And now Steemit offers a 90days Steem Power delegation at a great rate(you get 90% more than what you pay for. I recently used this service so now my voting power is 0.13 and I know this number will only go up as time passes by) This system is built on healthy and desirable basis.
However, these 95 people or IDs, rather, are getting voted with very high SBDs from @sndbox from paying him 40SBD every month. Could I say that they are abusing SBDs? Are they stealing my money indirectly?
Since they are not stealing my money directly out of my wallet, is their behavior considered to be smart?
I was told that the SBD I receive from my writings come from money someone invested in Steemit. I invested $ 1000 in my account to boost my Steem Power and I spent 24 SBD for 90 day delegation service.
Doesn’t this mean that I am one of the investors, too? Isn’t it a spirit of the whole cryptocurrencies? Small people like you and me to help build a new eco-system that is transparent and healthy?
Why do some people want to plant the seed of corruption in the healthy ecosystem like Steemit?
Is it because there are already huge trees of corruptions growing in Steemit that only I don’t know of?
There was one post that seems to be actually talking about something realistic among his early posts of @sndbox. (Like I said earlier, all of his postings has nice illustrations and writings but doesn’t really have tangible ideas.)
But this one(https://steemkr.com/introduceyourself/@sndbox/official-launch-of-sndbox-a-steemit-incubator-for-creatives-and-entrepreneurs) shows a couple of actual IDs and a link that is linked outside of Steemit which is https://streemian.com/
This website was somewhat tedious unlike his posts.
But I got the better sense of how this service works.
When you become a member, you ‘unlock’ your account for them to access so they can control your account, meaning that you send your writing via emails or some other ways and then they handle the rest of it like uploading your post and immediately voting for your post with huge amount of rewards by using their designated IDs such as @sndbox, @hansikhouse, @voronoi and also alternating other members’ IDs too.
(I picked out a few random people out of 95, and I see repeatedly the same IDs on the votings).
My guess is when a member uploads his post by himself, then there is no huge rewards from the company while when a member send his writing to the company and the company uploads for the member, then that post gets big rewards. You will see the huge difference on the reward amount between when the company gets involved in the votings and when it doesn’t.
All these members are using the same logo at the end of their posts. It must be an indicator for their membership.
And the @sndbox’s posts are so well decorated and the rewards are always well over $100, so the comment field below is always crowded. So out of my curiosity, I clicked several commentators. And sadly, all these people were minnows whose posts only gets 0.03, 0.05, 0.35 etc, getting sucked in for curation rewards.
If his posts attract this much attentions and get this much rewards, shouldn’t I see most of comments being placed between many of his members(subscribers) and him, instead of all the minnows and him?
@sndbox is bilingual at Korean and English, by the way.
Now the judgment is yours. If their behaviors is considered to be an abuse on the financial aspect of Steemit in your opinion, please resteem my post so it can spread it quickly, and vote my post to show your support so that future reporters like me and you to find more cases.
I believe that the more supporters we get, the faster Steemit will become one eco-system that doesn’t allow any room for curruption.
Thank you,
Sincerely,
@ddd67
After my posting uploaded, I read 5 comments(in my Korean posting)so far and would like to add some more resources because some people don’t look at this as abuse. And I have a convincing fact that why this can result in a big corruption and an eventual collapse of Steemit.
I just picked @shortcut who is simply the first person of the 95 people.
https://steemkr.com/@shortcut
@shortcut wrote a total of 13 articles a month recently.
Total amount he got rewarded was 453.03 for a month. There was only one article that received just 9.10 which I think he would normally receive from his ‘real’ followers without this service.
So, you spend 40 and receives 453. This is a great business, isn’t it? But then, wait, where does this 413 come from?
It comes from the solid finance structure of Steemit because we love the spirit of Steemit and we want Steemit to continue to grow meaning we actively write and invest. But with their excessively high reward rate, do you think the system will last solidly forever? Remember @shortcut is only one of 95 people from only one service company. Who knows how many of this kind of companies exist in here.
It could go forever if only a few percentage of users do this without us realizing. But luckily Steemit is open to everybody and person like me can catch it. Meaning everybody can catch it. And first thing in my mind, oh crap, let me pull out my investment. So this is my theory. Steemit is a beautiful ecosystem that allows lots of ways to make revenue but abusing the finance is not a beautiful way.