I'm getting a bunch of ICOs wanting to advertise on the forum, but I don't have time to do more than a very cursory review of each. Somebody trustworthy needs to set up a certification service that will work like this:
An ICO will pay you to apply for a certification. You will then spend many hours thoroughly reviewing everything about them in order to determine that they're at least basically sane. Some things that you should maybe check:
- If they're planning on creating software, require that they have the software already 5% done, preferably with a working proof-of-concept that you can play around with. Check that they haven't just filled a github repo with copy-pasted garbage code from elsewhere which doesn't actually do anything relevant.
- If they're planning on operating a real-world business (solar, mining, etc.), check that they have a registered business somewhere. Do a background check on all involved individuals. Require that they have some of the necessary assets (property, etc.) already purchased, and verify this using public records, etc.
- Check that there are no reasonable open scam accusations against anyone involved.
- If smart contracts are used, verify that the English terms match the smart contract terms. If there's any way for the smart contract terms to be changed, make sure that this is specified in the English terms.
- After reading all of their public info, ensure that there is no deception or any glaring holes.
- Check their website for copy-pasted text, photoshopped images, and fake people.
If they fail your criteria, then you should not certify them. That's important. If you just give a certification to everyone who pays you, you're useless. You should keep the application fee even if they fail, though in some cases you could allow them to reapply for certification after failing with a reduced fee. Your goal should be to eventually be able to publish a statistic like, "99% of ICOs I certified did not turn out to be scams." You should not attempt to certify that ICOs will actually appreciate in value or anything -- that'd be far too difficult --, but just that the collected money will be used as advertised.
Once I notice that a good, trustworthy certification service like this exists, I will require that ICOs wanting to advertise on the forum receive such a certification. (If/when there are multiple good certification services, I will publish a list of ones I consider acceptable.) So you'll get a built-in market from this, and even if an ICO has no interest in advertising on the forum, acquiring a widely-trusted certification has significant value in itself.
One of the things that BTRIC, my non-profit economic development organization, is working on is exactly this. A standardized methodology to evaluate and score ICO/ITOs, then evolving to score other entities such as exchanges (security audit frameworks, etc.) There are some good approaches from the community on various scoring factors but not much in terms of breaking down the nuts and bolts of each scoring component.
We will use this internally to incubate projects that score very well (though we'd rather have another impartial certifying body score our projects, we do not want a conflict of interest), and the standard will be public, open to input and participation from the community, and revised as best practices evolve.
In the face of the coming regulation, which we can't stop, and backlash, such as the Facebook advertising ban (and likely more), we need to work as a community -- and industry -- to develop standards before we get killed with overbearing regulations. We either come up with credible, well-defined, and transparent (open source) standards, or the regulators will impose standards we will have to live with.
Anyone interested in this project please contact me, I'm looking to get it underway in February. Feel free to PM or contact me on Telegram/email/etc, use the contacts for BTRIC in my signature.
Best regards,
Ben