Several users on Reddit and Twitter have raised some red flags regarding Substratum, an open-source project aimed at creating a foundation for the decentralized web.
The more recent concerns about the project were raised by crypto enthusiast Brian Li via a series of tweets:
1/ After examining #Substratum's #BCH and #LTC crowdsale wallets and finding major discrepancies, I decided to take a look at the #ETH wallet. For reference, Substratum reported 17,778.25 ETH were collected during the ICO process.https://t.co/Y3ugzapwSa
— Brian Li (@DecryptoBL) January 8, 2019
The Substratum team is currently undergoing a second ICO, this time to fund a new crypto exchange called Amplify. However, it seems that there is a discrepancy between the funds received and the ones declared on the whitepaper. On his personal blog, Brian Li published a post providing further evidence for Substratum’s missing ICO funds:
“A quick look into the various wallet addresses reveals that Substratum’s funding statistics in its whitepaper are not accurate, and the most obvious example is the difference between the reported and actual BCH contribution amounts. Substratum claims it received 602.1433 BCH during its ICO. However, the given BCH wallet address shows that 1304.26123096 were received in total. In other words, approximately 54% of Substratum’s BCH went unreported and unaccounted for.”
A Substratum community moderator offered an explanation for the inconsistency over Reddit, stating that a portion of the funds were received after the end of the ICO. The explanation was contested by Brian Li on his blog post and wasn’t well received by the Reddit community.
Older Concerns
This is isn’t the first time the crypto community has raised major red flags regarding the Substratum project.
Many members of the crypto community had already raised their eyebrows when the Substratum team announced the second ICO, particularly given the fact that Substratum still hasn’t presented a working product after more than a year.
Questioning the need for a second token, some also wondered how much faith the Substratum team has in their previous token, Substratum (SUB), since it is not accepted as a way of funding the new ICO, Amplify (AMPX). Brian Li also observed that changes to the Amplify (AMPX) whitepaper were made mid-ICO:
“Two days ago, I noticed the whitepaper link was no longer working on Amplify’s website. Since then, the 404 error has been fixed with a link to a newer version of the whitepaper. The original whitepaper was marked V5.12, while the new whitepaper reads V7. It’s strange for a project to swap out its whitepaper during an ICO process (before or after is okay),”
Other possible red flags that crypto enthusiasts flagged up include an allegedly fake Coinbase listing announcement and the criminal record of Justin Tabb, the founder and CEO of Substratum.
