Hi Hugeblack,

Thanks for the reply and sharing your feedback! Appreciate it.

I was naive in thinking website owners would fill in the form and deliver the data to me, that might be a result of the interface and/or placeholder text. I was hoping this service would be something websites we're lining up for, especially since they spend a lot of money on PR-firms that buy these backlinks/press releases for them. Making those offers public & transparent and improving authority of crypto websites is my goal. I think the only way forward is to collect this information myself, or partner with someone, which will hopefully result in websites posting their offers themselves.

The ranking will be based on the Domain Authority at first. If the demand is high, I will use more data and website visitors are certainly a nice option to add to the index. The problem with website visitor data is that it's hard to verify as an outsider if those stats are real visitors and nor purchased bot traffic. Therefore DA will be a better ranking factor imo.

Checking scam projects is difficult, but I will deny the offers of any obvious scam offers/sites. i will not rate the offers or sites, since there are too many factors to take into account, which I think is the responsibility of the backlink buyer. The buyer should always do their own research on any site they want to buy something from, which makes sense since they'll have to figure out of that site is a match for their marketing plan.

Thanks again and feel free to contact me with further questions or comments!

John

Hi,

I made an index of all the do-follow & press release offers of cryptocurrency related websites. So if you own or operate a website about crypto and you (want to) sell backlinks and/or paid publications , you can send in your offers for free and I will list them for you. Nice way to earn some extra crypto and improve the overall authority of crypto websites.

No strings attached, feel free to check it our yourself https://cryptobacklink.com/!

Cheers,

John

Yes, that's a though one. But don't forget you can always contact the team directly, for example through LinkedIn, or contact journalists or websites that have done a piece on them. Any extra info is welcome.

Thanks, I'm the author of the article on Uptrennd as well. This post is slightly different, but nevertheless relevant for people who are new to crypto. I've posted a disclaimer below the article just to be sure.

In this article I will give you 5 pointers on how to recognize scam coins & projects through whitepaper research. Although most projects that turned out to be a scam had a great whitepaper, some of them gave away their bad intentions in the whitepaper. So before investing in any cryptocurrency, you should always check the whitepaper!

What is a whitepaper?
So what is a Whitepaper exactly? When a company intends to launch a new cryptocurrency, they usually set out all the details in a Whitepaper. This document contains the technical, financial and commercial information about the project. This document normally explains in plain language what they’re planning to build, to attract investors and other interested parties. In other words, the whitepaper explains the project’s purpose and process, the Why and the How.

Not every project or coin starts with a whitepaper. Litecoin started by giving a video presentation on ‘Creating Litecoin’ at a Coinbase event. Loom Network decided not to write a whitepaper, but immediately started developing and delivering code. Others are just forks of existing projects, like Bitcoin, so they don't have their own whitepaper. Some projects bring out a Pink Paper, Green Paper or Yellow Paper and other projects, such as Cardano, bring out multiple whitepapers to describe every part of the tech they are building. Luckily, 99% of the cryptocurrencies and ICO’s/STO's/IEO's still release a whitepaper at some point to outline their project and tech. So if you thinking about investing in a new coin (and to avoid scams) your first stop is reading the whitepaper.

What parts of a whitepaper do I need to check before investing in a cryptocurrency?
Although scam projects are getting better and better in not raising any suspicion, there are some sections of the whitepaper which you need to take a closer look at to filter out unreliable projects.

1 - Technology
The most important thing is the project’s proposed (technical) solution to a real and relevant problem. It makes no difference if it's something new or a better application of existing tech, when the problem they're trying to solve doesn’t need solving, there’s a big chance the project will fail or is set up to raise a quick buck. This is usually the most difficult to verify, but keep an eye out for common buzzwords that are solely used to confuse u without really explaining what the project is about.

2 - Team, Advisors & Partnerships
The people behind the project should be easy to verify. Check their Linkedin, online profiles, company profiles, any addresses you find, advisors, partnerships etc. Don't be afraid to openly ask them if they're involved in the project. Fitrova, a project that did an exit scam, boasted about great partnerships, but after checking with those partners they denied even knowing the CEO. Declouds, also a scam, wanted to prove his alleged partnership with a bank, by photoshopping himself into a picture of the board members of that bank. And finally I almost participated in an ICO with fake team members, but just in time the community found out that all the pictures where stolen from some Australian School Board website. So always doublecheck the information provided to you about the people behind the project and don't forget to do a reverse image search on their pictures.

3 - Roadmap
Technical development always takes longer than promised, but a roadmap gives you an idea if they’re realistic about their goals. If the roadmap states that a mainnet will be delivered within a few months, that would be great, but could also indicate that they’re trying to make a quick buck (unless the started the development way before the ICO/STO/IEO of course).

4 - Token Allocation & Price
Things to look at are the amount of tokens they are going to bring out. It;s a difficult factor, but it might give you an idea if they're realistic about the project or just want to make a lot of money. If their total token supply and pricing results in a really high marketcap, you should be suspicious about their intentions. Other thing to look at: Will the tokens be locked up (vesting) for team members? Will they burn unsold tokens? Can they bring out extra tokens whenever they decide to do so? Normally the best token allocation for investors is projects with a low token supply, so you get a bigger piece of the pie when you invest, but this strongly depends on the other factors.

5 - The Rest
There are so many things that could be red flags. Make sure to also verify the information on their websites and social media, does it look real or are they just using empty words, fake testimonials and social media bots. It wouldn't be the first time that you are let to believe they already have a nice User Interface for their wallet, but in reality that are just stolen pictures from another project. Also beware of dubious statements, like stating they're SEC-compliant or already have secured listing on big exchanges. Or things like saying their product can be used in any store or with every bank. Watch out for Ponzi Schemes like Bitconnect, with promised returns on investment for holding their coins. Sometimes they bloat with big whales who have invested already. Always check out the contribution address and try to trace back those big whales, to make sure it's not the team contributing to itself faking that they already have landed investors.

Conclusion
In the end, you must feel safe about the project's intent after reading the whitepaper. A lot of projects that turned out to be a scam had a legit whitepaper at first sight. But after looking closer into the promises they make in the document, how they're going to build it and with whom they plan to make it a success, it should've been possible for investors to pick out the red flags. Of course there are many other factors that could lead to the conclusion that the project is a scam, but researching the whitepaper is one of the most accessible ways for you to verify it yourself.

The SEC also has made a great website to warn people about risky ICO's and scams and they also included a whitepaper about their fake-scamproject, in which you will recognize many of the pointers I brought up in this article, You can check that out here:https://www.howeycoins.com/files/howeycoin_white_paper.pdf.

Fortunately, https://www.allcryptowhitepapers.com has the largest whitepaper database in the world. With almost 1700 projects in our database, it’s the best place to start your research. Also don’t forget to check out the News section, which you can subscribe to by adding our RSS-feed

Thanks for reading!

John - All Crypto Whitepapers

(A different version of this article, including similar tips, has been posted here: https://www.uptrennd.com/post-detail/sto-whitepaper-research-avoiding-scams)

In this article I will give you 5 pointers on how to recognize scam coins & projects through whitepaper research. Although most projects that turned out to be a scam had a great whitepaper, some of them gave away their bad intentions in the whitepaper. So before investing in any cryptocurrency, you should always check the whitepaper!

What is a whitepaper?
So what is a Whitepaper exactly? When a company intends to launch a new cryptocurrency, they usually set out all the details in a Whitepaper. This document contains the technical, financial and commercial information about the project. This document normally explains in plain language what they’re planning to build, to attract investors and other interested parties. In other words, the whitepaper explains the project’s purpose and process, the Why and the How.

Not every project or coin starts with a whitepaper. Litecoin started by giving a video presentation on ‘Creating Litecoin’ at a Coinbase event. Loom Network decided not to write a whitepaper, but immediately started developing and delivering code. Others are just forks of existing projects, like Bitcoin, so they don’t have their own whitepaper. Some projects bring out a Pink Paper, Green Paper or Yellow Paper and other projects, such as Cardano, bring out multiple whitepapers to describe every part of the tech they are building. Luckily, 99% of the cryptocurrencies and ICO’s/STO’s/IEO’s still release a whitepaper at some point to outline their project and tech. So if you thinking about investing in a new coin (and to avoid scams) your first stop is reading the whitepaper.

What parts of a whitepaper do I need to check before investing in a cryptocurrency?
Although scam projects are getting better and better in not raising any suspicion, there are some sections of the whitepaper which you need to take a closer look at to filter out unreliable projects.

1 – Technology
The most important thing is the project’s proposed (technical) solution to a real and relevant problem. It makes no difference if it’s something new or a better application of existing tech, when the problem they’re trying to solve doesn’t need solving, there’s a big chance the project will fail or is set up to raise a quick buck. This is usually the most difficult to verify, but keep an eye out for common buzzwords that are solely used to confuse u without really explaining what the project is about.

2 – Team, Advisors & Partnerships
The people behind the project should be easy to verify. Check their Linkedin, online profiles, company profiles, any addresses you find, advisors, partnerships etc. Don’t be afraid to openly ask them if they’re involved in the project. Fitrova, a project that did an exit scam, boasted about great partnerships, but after checking with those partners they denied even knowing the CEO. Declouds, also a scam, wanted to prove his alleged partnership with a bank, by photoshopping himself into a picture of the board members of that bank. And finally I almost participated in an ICO with fake team members, but just in time the community found out that all the pictures where stolen from some Australian School Board website. So always doublecheck the information provided to you about the people behind the project and don’t forget to do a reverse image search on their pictures.

3 – Roadmap
Technical development always takes longer than promised, but a roadmap gives you an idea if they’re realistic about their goals. If the roadmap states that a mainnet will be delivered within a few months, that would be great, but could also indicate that they’re trying to make a quick buck (unless the started the development way before the ICO/STO/IEO of course).

4 – Token Allocation & Price
Things to look at are the amount of tokens they are going to bring out. It;s a difficult factor, but it might give you an idea if they’re realistic about the project or just want to make a lot of money. If their total token supply and pricing results in a really high marketcap, you should be suspicious about their intentions. Other thing to look at: Will the tokens be locked up (vesting) for team members? Will they burn unsold tokens? Can they bring out extra tokens whenever they decide to do so? Normally the best token allocation for investors is projects with a low token supply, so you get a bigger piece of the pie when you invest, but this strongly depends on the other factors.

5 – The Rest
There are so many things that could be red flags. Make sure to also verify the information on their websites and social media, does it look real or are they just using empty words, fake testimonials and social media bots. It wouldn’t be the first time that you are let to believe they already have a nice User Interface for their wallet, but in reality that are just stolen pictures from another project. Also beware of dubious statements, like stating they’re SEC-compliant or already have secured listing on big exchanges. Or things like saying their product can be used in any store or with every bank. Watch out for Ponzi Schemes like Bitconnect, with promised returns on investment for holding their coins. Sometimes they bloat with big whales who have invested already. Always check out the contribution address and try to trace back those big whales, to make sure it’s not the team contributing to itself faking that they already have landed investors.

Conclusion
In the end, you must feel safe about the project’s intent after reading the whitepaper. A lot of projects that turned out to be a scam had a legit whitepaper at first sight. But after looking closer into the promises they make in the document, how they’re going to build it and with whom they plan to make it a success, it should’ve been possible for investors to pick out the red flags. Of course there are many other factors that could lead to the conclusion that the project is a scam, but researching the whitepaper is one of the most accessible ways for you to verify it yourself.
Fortunately, www.allcryptowhitepapers.com has the largest whitepaper database in the world. With almost 1700 projects in our database, it’s the best place to start your research. Also don’t forget to check out the Whitepaper of the Week and News section, so you don’t miss out on anything. Knowledge is power!

Hi sana54210,

Thanks for reading and reaching out.

I've added a disclaimer to the post. Generally speaking, we index every whitepaper of every coin that is being traded & indexed on Coinmarketcap. I hope even newbies do not interpret that as a vouch or endorsement for all those projects. We always promote DYOR and therefore we have created the platform. The Whitepaper of the Week usually is a paid promo (not in this case though), so we always disclose that on our platform. I will work on a better disclaimer for the platform so there's no confusion about out intentions, which is being a one-stop-shop for people who want to do more research on a coin by reading the whitepaper(s).

Hope that clears things up

0Chain is a public, permissionless infrastructure cloud designed to host the next-generation of software and services

Alphanet is out and 0Box is ready for testing. This project is aiming to disrupt the Cloud industry and has made some exiting stuff along the way, like a wallet that's more secure than 2FA and achieving sub-second finality!

• 0ChainNet - A public, enterprise-grade, fast blockchain powered by an innovative consensus protocol.
• 0Box - A high-performance, highly-secure, decentralized storage (dStorage™) platform
• 0Wallet - A cryptocurrency wallet that is more secure than traditional 2FA, and more convenient than a hardware wallet. All you need are 2 devices and a PIN to send a transaction.

Read more about 0Chain's innovative solutions here: https://www.allcryptowhitepapers.com/whitepaper-of-the-week/ and https://0chain.net/



John
CEO - ALL Crypto Whitepapers

This is a promoted post. Always Do Your Own Research before investing!

Hi Guys,

I'm looking for some advertisers for my site, the largest crypto whitepaper database: https://www.allcryptowhitepapers.com.

Offering banners, leaderbords etc. I've kept de website clean (without ads) until now, but it's time to monetize it a bit more.

So if you're part of an STO, IEO or ICO that is legit and already has a nice whitepaper, feel free to send me a message on the site or DM me here for more info.

I have a dedicated group of visitors that are purely interested in legit projects, with good tech and a well written whitepaper.

Thanks,

John

Thanks!

And it may be a coincidence, but Flowchain updated their whitepaper in the meantime 

https://www.allcryptowhitepapers.com/whitepaper-of-the-week/

Hi! Thanks for reading my post and commenting. How our site works is that we only index projects that are already being traded on exchanges and have been listed on coinmarketcap. So we don't list ICO's. This also results in the fact that those whitepapers will probably be a few months to a year old. Our Whitepaper of the Week is a paid promotion, so we don't pick the whitepapers ourselves (we obviously filter out the non-legit ones). If we had to make a decision on the best whitepapers out there, that would be quite hard, since you'd have to hire a few tech guys to make an unbiased review of every whitepaper, and we think there are other sites better in that .

John

Does your favorite cryptocurrency need a boost? Does it have solid tech and a good whitepaper? Feel free to shill them to me and hopefuly we can convince them to become Whitepaper of the Week!

Our last Whitepaper of the Week was the Ardor Whitepaper, which was a real boost for the community. We got almost 30k impressions per tweet, which hopefully attracted new investors & other interested parties for Ardor.

This is our whitepaper of the week promotion page: https://www.allcryptowhitepapers.com/whitepaper-of-the-week/

Looking forward to your suggestions!

John

0chain is the world's fastest blockchain that is infinitely scalable.
0chain provides smart contracts to monetize data, enable private transactions and easy governance for enterprises and dApps.

They're also launching 0Box, a privacy-proof wallet that enables you to monetize your data! Check out the animation I made about 0Box below & upvote if you like it .

https://www.reddit.com/r/0chain/comments/agxyzu/introducing_0box_the_1_wallet_that_gives_you/

Ardor is a “full blockchain-as-a-service” multi-chain platform that evolved from the time-tested Nxt blockchain. The mainnet went live on 01 January 2018. The unique parent-child chain architecture of Ardor, with a single security chain providing energy-efficient proof of stake consensus for multiple transactional “child chains,” enables three fundamental advantages — reduced blockchain bloat, increased scalability, and the ability to launch and host ready-to-use interconnected blockchains.

Jelurida is the corporate entity responsible for the development of the Ardor and Nxt platforms. Ignis is Ardor’s first public, permissionless, and fully featured child chain maintained by Jelurida. The features and functionality available on Nxt were implemented on Ignis — along with new features such as lightweight contracts, account and asset controls, and composite phased transactions. Businesses can launch apps and services using the features available on the Ignis child chain such as issuing and trading digital assets, launching voting systems, and leveraging distributed cloud storage.

Multiple additional child chains can be created on the Ardor platform for various organizations, such as public entities, enterprises, consortiums, research institutions, and financial service providers who wish to customize the features available to their child chain end-users. The platform’s technological innovations make it possible for large corporations and SMEs to have a child chain with ready-to-use features and a distributed security network, instead of creating their own network of nodes to support a blockchain and developing features from scratch. Child chains can be implemented in a cost-effective way without compromising their security, which is guaranteed through transaction “bundlers” connecting child chains to the parent Ardor chain.

Check out the whitepaper and useful links about this project on All Crypto Whitepapers: https://www.allcryptowhitepapers.com/whitepaper-of-the-week/

Happy reading!

John van Rijck

Disclaimer: The Whitepaper of the Week is promoted content. Read more here: https://www.allcryptowhitepapers.com/advertising/.

That would be awesome, but I'm busy enough as it is with adding & updating whitepapers  . Pretty difficult as well since you have to be really tech savvy to get to the core of the tech and make a solid assessment of how they're going to solve a problem...I think other people will be better in that  . Definitely love the suggestion though, would've been a good addition to the site.

Thanks for all the interesting insights everyone!

I think we can agree that you should take a look at the whitepaper at some point in your research, but there are many other things that are also good to check out before you become an investor. Such as asking questions to the team, checking out the community and their feeling toward the project and its team, double-checking the website for any updates in the roadmap or token allocation etc. But even if your research is great, you should always keep an eye out for scams by regularly checking up on all these factors.

Keep sharing

yeah, token allocation is so important! Same as lock-up period for the team, you don't want to run the risk that the team can dump 25% extra tokens on the market after a year or so.

Ofcourse reading a whitepaper is not a guarantee that the projects doesn't end up being a scam, but it could sure help to filter those kind of projects beforehand. I wrote a small article a while ago on recognizing those scams > https://blokt.com/security/how-crypto-whitepaper-research-can-help-you-to-avoid-scams.