There are funds on peer4commit that were left by a scammer and I don’t know what to do with them.
The story is a little long, I’ll try to make it short.
Github user plymouth21 forked a project on GitHub and added it to peer4commit: http://peer4commit.com/projects/38
The project received a single donation of 2000 PPC.
Plymouth21 made a lot of fake commits to withdraw all the funds. He also tried to exploit a supposed bug to withdraw more than the available funds and take peercoins from other projects. But this attempt failed and 473 peercoins were blocked. Then I disabled the project to prevent him from trying again until I decide what to do.
Then beaverweaver opened an issue on github because the project disapeared: https://github.com/sigmike/peer4commit/issues/77
He says he’s the one who sent the 2000 PPC. I tell him I’ll send him back the remaining 473 PPC if he can prove he’s really the one who sent them. But since he sent them directly from an exchange he can’t do that.
Then plymouth21 created another GitHub account (tip-commit), created another fake project (http://peer4commit.com/projects/47), donated 478 PPC and tried again to withdraw more funds than the available funds. He failed again and left the 478 PPC that are now locked too.
He then asked me to release the funds: https://github.com/sigmike/peer4commit/issues/84
beaverweaver asked what’s going on and I explained all that to him: https://github.com/sigmike/peer4commit/issues/87
I proposed to move the remaining funds to a similar project. He refused saying he doesn’t trust peer4commit anymore.
He wants me to send him the funds but I still think I should not send funds back to someone unless he can provide proof they belong to him. So this looks like a dead end.
At one point (https://github.com/sigmike/peer4commit/issues/87#issuecomment-44199542) he agreed to make a list of projects to send funds to.
But now he’s angry and calls me a scammer.
I still think the best option is to send these funds to a similar project. But if the community could reach a consensus on that I’d be happy to follow it.
Funds donated to Peer4commit projects once donated is final and irreversible.
I would stick to this line as you will end up with a mess of people asking for funds back etc or scams like you report and as soon as you refund one you will be forced to do them all and last thing you want is to send coins to someone who did not donate and has failed to scam the system to get more funds out.
Its tough as beaverweaver could be the genuine donator and could feel burnt by the experience especially for donating 2000PPC … however they should feel that moving the funds to the new project that is what they originally donated to the cause.
So you could move the remaining funds to this repo and I can maintain the development and code reviews. Lot on my plate so I will not have much time to work on this but maybe with the PPC bounty on it we can get the ball rolling.
I feel this highlights the case where peer4commit has been abused / started to be abused by users as the rewards are high so there is too much financial incentives. Well done for being open and public about this and asking for community to come to agreement on what to do. ALL DONATORS though please read carefully what you are donating to and read the forums here for trusted members of repo maintainers.
Regarding the other projects … what deems them to be failed projects?? do they expire after a number of months of no activity? or is it the original opener of the project that decides to close the project down? I would be tempted to take any funds over 100 PPC and make a new repo and move the funds there. Anything under I think can be safely taken by you for running the service, administration and servers. if there is a similar project then yeh id move funds to those projects…
On a block explorer has the send address of the donation seen more than one transactions (reused)? If yes beaverweaver can try sending 0.1PPC from the same exchange to peer4commit, maybe the send address is the same. If beaverweaver sent PPCs to his own address from the same exchange then he can remove some doubt by proving he owns the receiving address. But showing he could send from the same address doesn’t 100% prove that beaverweaver was the donator because many exchanges use the same hotwallet send address that is not difficult to find out.
Anyway I am for not sending back. But if there wasn’t an existing agreement I can understand why people could be mad about it.
but if chose to transfer coins to another project it would be better to make something new about peercoin, note there are already few wallet apps, exchanges and so on, but there is no any united market, where you can buy or sell something via peercoins, I mean not like something like a place where everyone can freely sell what he got, and we can buy it paying with peercoins
I proposed to move the remaining funds to a similar project. He refused saying he doesn’t trust peer4commit anymore.
And doesn’t he have every right to feel this way? What can be put into place so that this does not happen again?[/quote]
I think the proposal Sigmike put forward earlier addresses most of the issue. By assigning fundraiser and project maintainers roles and the ability for people to see the track record of the people involved in the project.
I do agree with FB that donors still need to do their due diligence before donating, as there will always people trying to abuse the system in some way or the other
Honestly there is not much we can do as donor cannot proof the coins where theirs. Transferring the funds to the project FB created is probably the best compromise given circumstances.
FB repos @FB, don’t want to be critical as I know you are busy, but would you be comfortable if someone else created a fork from one of the projects you maintain, which some of them haven’t moved for a while for different reasons and then asked Sigmike to move the funds to their project? What I’m trying to say I guess, is that we might have to be a bit more transparent to the donors on what they can expect for their donations including updates along the way. Maybe we should open a thread for every project >100 PPC, add the link to peer4commit and urge the project maintainer to post their thoughts and status or post link to e.g. issues on github or a google document they maintain. And only if the project maintainer stays silent or walked away and no progress is made for say 6 months, the community can advise to move the funds to similar projects.
PPCoin repo
Now we are at it, one can also wonder what to do with ppcoin/ppcoin the official repository. SK refuses any donations and there seems to be no-one else known to update the repository. To me it would make sense to move all donations to the peerunity project as this is an active community driven project improving that same wallet. Any proven and successful commit would be added by SK to the official repository when he/they seemed them fit for purpose again without accepting donations. Just saying that the donations are currently not put to good use or serve their purpose and this won’t change in the foreseeable future. Keen to hear what others think of this.
No purpose for coinbase-android when Coinbase doesn’t support PPC.
Sad to hear that sigmike was called a scammer, some steps have to be taken to prevent it in future.
It would be nice to cleanup super3 funds move http://peer4commit.com/projects/2/tips .
[quote=“kac-, post:7, topic:2421”]No purpose for coinbase-android when Coinbase doesn’t support PPC.
Sad to hear that sigmike was called a scammer, some steps have to be taken to prevent it in future.
It would be nice to cleanup super3 funds move http://peer4commit.com/projects/2/tips .[/quote]
Yes, we could use some additional funds for the overhaul of the website. It is clearly hard to get people interested on this complicated piece of work.
I think super3 should move the funds. I believe it is now easier for the project maintainer to move funds. Still not clear to me why the move of the repo was required.
@cybernate yes I would be happy for someoneactive and showing they capable of undertaking work to fork my repos and funds to be moved there but they would need to be either trusted member for anything over 500 PPC to be moved in my mind or demonstrated their coding ability… but in the latter they best to just do the work and send me the commits for code reviews, then I merge the changes and they get their tips… The reason there has not been much movement is people are not working on them full stop, most of my time has been spent on Peershares of late and moving jobs in real life, once the new job settled in I should have more time to work on the services and projects more.
Loved your proposal for a thread for each project and this is how Peercointalk, peer4commit and the github repos can work nicely together to show development direction etc… not everyone uses github so issue tracking in there is not seen by all and discussions happen n there that could / should possibly be done here in forum. This was what the original “bounty” section of the forum was for as well to encourage these projects etc and people donate funds to them, now with Peer4commit in place I have just been slow on the update of peercointalk, i’ll see if I can get my repos done today as template examples for others to see what I was thinking.
PPCoin repo - I think your suggestion to move to peerunity repo is similar to my idea to move funds to a community controlled ppcoin repo, but I am hesitant about moving the funds.
I was / am collecting developers on github here Peercoin Team Repo · GitHub with the idea to transfer some of my repos in here so there is a team of developers who can code review commits and speed the development process along by pooling our resources. I think adding the peerunity repo in there would be a start, but my concern is that some people might want to see the PPcoin repo worked on and they are less interested in the peerunity client. Sunny has said he will not make aesthetic changes (qt change) to the client so it is up to the community to do this. Whats to stop us trying to raise separate funds for the community Peerunity repo? Need to make sure we do not divide the developers onto too many different but similar projects as well as I do feel thinly spread at times and that there are not many of us actually coding, but there are people out there interested and capable of helping.
yeh just looks bad need to admin and clean up this stuff but changes coming in peer4commit that this should be a thing of the past.
Right now projects do not expire or anything. Only the project collaborators have control over the funds. And so have I, as a last resort.
The other projects I mentioned are clear abuse attempts. I’m not talking about the inactive projects. The 10 PPC one is empty and was only made to try to withdraw more the what was donated. The 117 PPC one was meant to trick donors (the username is super-3 whereas our community member is super3). But I don’t know whether the funds were sent by the fraud to give credibility to the project or by someone who has fallen for it.
There was no existing agreement, except the peer4commit rules. At that time the rule was 1% for each commit. I changed that and beaverweaver said that’s what he disliked most: What's going on Mike? · Issue #87 · sigmike/peer4commit · GitHub. But after discussing that I think his main concern is that projects with funds do not move fast enough or do not move at all. And I share this concern.
[quote=“Yurizhai, post:4, topic:2421”]
I proposed to move the remaining funds to a similar project. He refused saying he doesn’t trust peer4commit anymore.
And doesn’t he have every right to feel this way? What can be put into place so that this does not happen again?[/quote]
Of course he does. But we still have to find a compromise.
I think the major changes I proposed will help on that because there will be public comments, competition on trust, and because fundraisers will get things moving (that’s their job). The multisignature will also give donors some control. I asked his opinion on these changes as a solution but I didn’t get an answer.
About FB repository my concern is this project may not move. If that happens then the problem is not really solved.
A solution may be to wait for the new peer4commit and select a project from there. An important criterion for the decision would be that real things are expected to be done with the funds.
What do you think about having a committee that would make decisions when such problems with no obvious solution appear?
I’m better at coding than managing this kind of problem so I’d gladly delegate that.
Beaverweaver may have a seat in this committee.
Developers wanted
I think it becomes more and more clear that the real problem is not the fundraising, but to get someone to manage the project and even more important a quality developer. I’m somewhat surprised that we are not able to attract more freelance people. Apparently this type of work is either in the too hard basket and easier jobs are readily available or we are not able to reach the right people. Maybe we do need to advertise more on non-crypto sites to generate interest? I think that’s what we did for Peershares, although that is a job, I understand. Advertising might cost PPCs though.
Committee
Regarding committee, sounds ok but I think it need to be at least selected at random and anonymous from e.g. volunpeers or being paid well (or better both) as you don’t want to be harassed in the real world if your decision is not liked by some people and it would take some time to dive into the problem and discuss the possible solutions.
Maybe for each case 5 random volunpeers are selected and asked to vote anonymously. Having said that, just to get the committee together and prepare the options and documents is already a lot of work. Maybe you would even be better of with professional real world binding mediation. Maybe raise the peer4commit cut to 1.25% and set the 0.25 aside to settle issue professionally. Both parties should also contribute a fixed fee (e.g. 25 PPC) on top of that to reduce the number of cases and minor issues.
There was no existing agreement, except the peer4commit rules. At that time the rule was 1% for each commit. I changed that and beaverweaver said that’s what he disliked most: What's going on Mike? · Issue #87 · sigmike/peer4commit · GitHub. But after discussing that I think his main concern is that projects with funds do not move fast enough or do not move at all. And I share this concern.[/quote]
I take a look at the address and its ancestor addresses. It does seem to belong to a hotwallet of an exchange. Don’t send any fund to the address.
Tricky situation this! Maybe you should set up a poll where people can propose and vote on other projects to which the scam funds can be transferred?
For what it’s worth I reckon you’d be ok to transfer the ppcoin funds to peerunity, considering how SK is the main contributor to that repo and that he doesn’t take tips. Transferring them to peerunity is a logical move as it’s an extension of ppcoin.
As for the lack of developers, I’m looking to branch into some more useful programming! I do a lot of Matlab programming at work but I’d like to learn php and c++, so for the moment I’ve forked the block explorer and POS calculator, and will be looking to work on them
[quote=“svk, post:15, topic:2421”]Tricky situation this! Maybe you should set up a poll where people can propose and vote on other projects to which the scam funds can be transferred?
For what it’s worth I reckon you’d be ok to transfer the ppcoin funds to peerunity, considering how SK is the main contributor to that repo and that he doesn’t take tips. Transferring them to peerunity is a logical move as it’s an extension of ppcoin.
As for the lack of developers, I’m looking to branch into some more useful programming! I do a lot of Matlab programming at work but I’d like to learn php and c++, so for the moment I’ve forked the block explorer and POS calculator, and will be looking to work on them :)[/quote]
Just a point of clarification, but Sunny King isn’t the main contributor to the Peerunity repo, though he does have commit access, and his original Peercoin source code changes to Bitcoin are still very prevalent. The Peerunity project, to date, hasn’t received any pull requests from Sunny King for new work.
I’m glad to see that you’re interested in getting more involved in some of the development projects that are going on around the Peercoin domain, svk! There’s plenty of room and funding available for anyone who wants to get their “hands dirty,” and dig into the different projects. The more the merrier!
[quote=“Ben, post:16, topic:2421”][quote=“svk, post:15, topic:2421”]Tricky situation this! Maybe you should set up a poll where people can propose and vote on other projects to which the scam funds can be transferred?
For what it’s worth I reckon you’d be ok to transfer the ppcoin funds to peerunity, considering how SK is the main contributor to that repo and that he doesn’t take tips. Transferring them to peerunity is a logical move as it’s an extension of ppcoin.
As for the lack of developers, I’m looking to branch into some more useful programming! I do a lot of Matlab programming at work but I’d like to learn php and c++, so for the moment I’ve forked the block explorer and POS calculator, and will be looking to work on them :)[/quote]
Just a point of clarification, but Sunny King isn’t the main contributor to the Peerunity repo, though he does have commit access, and his original Peercoin source code changes to Bitcoin are still very prevalent. The Peerunity project, to date, hasn’t received any pull requests from Sunny King for new work.
I’m glad to see that you’re interested in getting more involved in some of the development projects that are going on around the Peercoin domain, svk! There’s plenty of room and funding available for anyone who wants to get their “hands dirty,” and dig into the different projects. The more the merrier![/quote]
Yea that sentence wasn’t too clear maybe, I was of course referring to the ppcoin repository with respect to SK. I know you guys are doing awesome work without him!
Thanks for the encouragement, I hope I can be of use!
[quote=“Cybnate, post:13, topic:2421”]Developers wanted
I think it becomes more and more clear that the real problem is not the fundraising, but to get someone to manage the project and even more important a quality developer. I’m somewhat surprised that we are not able to attract more freelance people. Apparently this type of work is either in the too hard basket and easier jobs are readily available or we are not able to reach the right people[/quote]
In fact, I think that quite a few people on this forum have some good development skills and would be willing to help.
May be we could setup a developer/contributor directory on peer4commit where people could indicate their skills and availability.
There is also probably the need for a developer wiki with docs and tutorials to help getting started.
I really would like to get involved in crypto development but the first step is rather challenging.
There is also probably the need for a developer wiki with docs and tutorials to help getting started.
SirCoinGame is making his way through the Peershares wiki documentation right now, and porting over the relevant parts to the Peerunity wiki. It’s our intent that the documentation hosted there will be very detailed, but it will take time and effort to make it happen. Once the first pass is in place, and if it meets the needs of the community (both novice, expert, and developers, alike), I’m strongly considering pointing http://peercoinwiki.org there. It was tough to get people engaged in writing content, but having it in a single, easy to maintain location would go a long way.
I’ll post a separate conversation topic about that, when I get a chance.
