So, I sent mandica a PM yesterday, here is how it went:
Hi Mandica, thought I would send you a message rather than going back and forth in the thread.
I've dug in to your initial developer and his work and I'm now seeing that jbg is most likely not the one driving things here, but as it stands he is still the development face behind XSPEC.
If things can get cleared up here, then I'll translate it in the thread and let people know what's really going on with XSPEC vs jbg, I've already made a post correcting my points about jbg being the one behind XSPEC as a project, I'm not doing this to hurt any one or shit talk a project, I'm just trying to bring some transparency to the crypto space and jbg's work is highly suspicious at best.
A few points I would suggest:
1. Be more transparent and honest about the developer, the biggest red flag is his lies around experience, names can be kept secret but the rest has to be honest, I'm not saying you've lied about his experience but you should be policing your staff to keep a good honest image.
2. Get people in your community who can audit the work done, you are paying for this after all? I'm happy to do it for free.
3. The shilling is being driven by some one, this may be completely out of your power but some one is driving it, this isn't typical for any coin of any size, referral systems tend to create this nature but for a non referral coin this is far and beyond the norm.
4. You need a white paper, much of the doubt comes from the lack of such.
5. Perhaps you need to consider removing jbg from the picture and get a new developer, he's ripping you off and hurting the image of your coin.
At the end of the day, the concept behind XSPEC is great, but we see no indicators that it'll ever be achieved, and if we dig in to things deeper it starts to look very suspicious when you compare the promises vs what's been done in a period of time, I would like to believe you are hiring more developers but jbg has driven too much false hope to believe this purely on word.
I would suggest step 1 being dismissal of jbg once you find a new developer, let the community know, a small delay is better than allowing such a bad taste to continue and it should be in your interest to get your values worth from a developer.
Also what's the story with Brycel?
I'm giving benefit of the doubt in this message even though it's pretty hard with the way things have been done, in saying that I've seen developers take people for a ride many times, so I'm interested in your response.
Her response is to come in here and ask me to prove my background, I'm not the one trying to take money from people, I have absolutely nothing to prove.
jbg has admitted he is in his 20s, I've also come to learn his name, he's a guy in New Zealand, and yes in his late 20s, I won't expose his name out of respect but JBG = his true initials, you are outright lying right there.
We've been over the nitpicking about Shadow Cash, this isn't what the argument is about for the 5th time.
I've made a comment prior about the first developer and his work on xSPEC and Tor, go read it please, I said he's done more than JBG, my findings were focused on JBGs commits which are lacking, he is the current developer and the one driving it's future.
Regardless of your excuses for the ring size downgrade, you've hyped it as a big feature change (Improvements to ring signatures)
It's not an improvement, and now you're claiming it relates to a feature in 1.4 (Spectre Tokens) which is yet to be seen, typically you would change this as required, all you've done is removed anonymity from spectrecoin, you're now saying an anonymous token is around the corner which will take over the public coins?
I don't care what's coming, explain why in 9 months of JBG developing he's done nothing yet you've hyped these minimal useless changes as a big deal?
What a joke, you're a liar also, just explain my simple question, why in 9 months has a days worth of work been done outside of the donation system?
I don't care for anything more than that.
Rather than explaining my findings you're still trying to discredit me, this is not how you should go about things, you've shown the value of XSPEC in the process, it should not be this hard.