RE: Investigating the Pomegranate Network Mining Gridcoin
No, we are stating a series of facts and likely conclusions, then giving you the option to explain why there is so much shady business going on.
If you were not personally on Slack, then who is the Pomegranate account that tried to claim the commemorative coin? You proved your identity through your wallet to try claim that coin to @jringo, so I do not understand how you can claim that was not you.
We have no axe to grind, and have no personal reason to get anyone away from GRC. Quite the opposite. In fact, we would have hoped you can explain why everything looks so shady in a way that alleviated the concerns of the community.
You are not correct. In a perfect world our concern is unfounded and your end users continue to do research. It's fantastic to see the amount of compute your CPID is contributing, but it needs to be above board or it looks really bad for both BOINC and Gridcoin.
Likely conclusions? You mean entirely unfounded and malicious accusations. Botnet? Stealing? Are you serious?
(You keep suggesting we're a one man band, btw. I've never even used Slack. That was a dev. You would know all this if you'd bothered to contact me to get to the truth.)
Since I wrote that comment, I've discovered that you do indeed have an axe to grind, as you're a massive miner yourself. So if we go away, you earn more GRC? Well, colour me amazed.
This also means you understand BOINC, and surely must have also known that our client can only ever be installed with user permission. I am therefore now struggling to see your accusations as honest mistakes.
We have contributed more to BOINC than you know. In fact, without our company's intervention, BOINC might not even exist now. Literally.
Bang out of order, dude.
I never used the word stealing, where are you getting this from?
I am aware you are not a one man band. Why is contacting another member of your band not an attempt to contact CE? They verified their identity through access to your GRC wallet, so they seemed like a reasonable port of call.
Stop accusing me of having an axe to grind. I am a 'big' miner, but I am running literally the least efficient project (Einstein@home). I am not bothered by mag, but as a researcher myself I do want to see GRC succeed.
I am not accusing you of anything. I am asking you to comment on some things that don't seem to add up. This discussion has been going on internally for a long time now.
Are you for real? Your title is "Exposing the pomegranate botnet", for crying out loud! How is that not accusing?
I've also just been sent some chat logs in which you openly call us a scam, you "have all the dirt on us", we are a front for malware (really? !), etc. So yeah, you're accusing us just fine (defaming, to be exact...) - and now you're lying about it too.
I haven't sacrificed ten years of my life creating this thing from scratch, on a shoestring, to have it bad-mouthed by a couple of conspiracy theorists who can't do basic fact checking.
You owe us a massive apology.
By saying that "Exposing the pomegranate botnet" is an accusation to you, you admitted that you, or your company are behind the pomegranate.
Also how they were to contact you, if there was no easy way from 'Pomegranate' to 'Mark McAndrew'?
The only certain contact link we had was that Pomegranate on Slack controlled the Pomegranate miner's wallet. @jringo confirmed this as part of the commemorative coin claim process. When I tried to open a dialogue with Pomegranate on Slack it was ignored.
Yes, CE controls that account. So what? They already knew it was us, it wasn't some massive secret.
If we'd wanted to keep it secret we'd have used multiple CPIDs. Why draw attention if trying to hide?
Only reason we didn't call it CE grid or some such was because we're big enough to 51% the network (EDIT: since been told it changed to PoS) and we didn't want to worry the troops and potentially crash GRC. Indeed, we've been going deliberately easy - which we will now prove.
Meanwhile, I run the company and I'm easy to contact via all the regular channels. That one of our developers had once logged into slack to claim that coin, is of no relevance. They got no reply, so why didn't they call me? Email me? Find me on twitter or LinkedIn?
Because they didn't want answers, that's why. They wanted to smear.
We'll apologize once we can trust you. Here's how.
Not me that needs to earn trust here, it's you. You made the botnet accusation, it's pure bullshit, you're in the wrong, end of story.
Even if everything is above board, your business model appears to be predatary and entirely in bad taste.
You get people to install your client with either promises that they are helping charity and could win some money or by the dubious (even when legal) method of bundling it with other software. You then take all of the money earned and give some back to charity and some back to the users.
What your users don't seem to realise is that both they and the charities would be far better off if they ran Boinc themselves and donated half of their earnings to charity. The only people making money from this is yourselves by preying on people who are not informed or are not very computer literate.
Personally my opinion is that you are morally wrong (boarderline legally wrong) in your blatently over-exagerated claims.
I have no doubt you do give some money to charity and give some back to users, but how your business operates is extremely unethical and distasteful even if you can argue it's just about legal.
How do you think we pay our staff, in candy floss? Share of profits and revenue are not the same thing. This is very basic stuff.
As the prize fund is technically a business expense, not profit, it means the remaining 33-33 is the same as saying 50-50. So yes, we give half the profit to charity. More, in fact. Way more, if you count the value of the computing we donate to science too.
It is illegal under UK law to even mention the charities on our site without written permission from each one. Not amazed that you didn't know this.
We now administer more machines than the rest of BOINC combined, correct. And yes, we can easily ramp up to 1m+ by increasing our marketing spend. I'd call that a massive success, especially given that without us the BOINC user base would still be constantly shrinking, and the BOINC project itself might not even exist by now.
Nothing you claim is unethical, actually is. You've assumed and accused without basic fact checking, just like the OP. Not on.
"How do you think we pay our staff" you constitute an arbitrary layer of friction and we are arguing against your existence. Ideally your "staff" does not get paid and people do what they want with their own earnings. Your organization seems like the text-book example of centralized entity gone rouge. You are the reason why people created blockchains and trustless protocols.
Your business model is dead, all we need to do is come together, say some words in memory and bury it!
PS: As for the claim that BOINC would not exist if it weren't for you: props to you for making me giggle :)
So you twist and turn again to justify yourself. Your aggressive manner is not that of a professional and does nothing to pursuade me that you are anything but the grubby company I have come to consider you.
Doing some creative accounting to ensure that the lions share of revenue is not counted as profit is pretty low and only backs up my position that both your users and the charities would be much better off without you as middle man.
I also highly doubt your claims that you are bigger than Boinc and the saviours of Boinc.