This whole situation shows only how toxic this space can be.
You can't say that the whole space is toxic because you had bad experience with one member from bitcointalk forum.
There are a lot of people who are trying to scam people, or they are just trying to earn few sats in any way possible, and when they can get very angry if they don't get what they want.
My suggestion is to always check post history of any member in forum and think well before making some deal with anyone, no matter what his rank is.
I am going to tag member
gondel and I hope to see his explanation here.
I have a question though- what could be the appropriate sanctions for a person intentionally spreading libelous and unfounded claims against a project? Clearly, there has some sort of damage that OP incurred due to the spread of malicious words/statements that affected the general feedback of his project.
Is there some sort of remedy that OP could have exercised and gained from this experience? Is negatively-tagging the person the only solution that can pacify this situation? I am really curious since I hate for this to happen to anyone who genuinely shares an interesting idea, only to get destroyed by a single person spreading lies about it.