In recent weeks it came to our attention that despite various forms of oversight, the Vibes competition was compromised both from within and externally.
This information is being presented for your consideration.
Internal Scheme
The internal and most significant issue was discovered by a Hive member who became aware of what was first thought to be a vote trading type of a situation. After investigating it further, it turned out to be a sophisticated kickback scheme that involved multiple Hive members.
Everyone familiar with Vibes knows that @verbal-d was the main curator and judge in the competition. His job was to curate good submissions and be part of the nomination process. For this job he received a small payment which came from posting rewards (Value Plan-related projects may not pay team members and rely on volunteers). There is no excuse for what he did.
Before we move further, let us be clear that this matter is under ongoing investigation. The penalty for fraud is the addition to the Hive Watchers/Spaminator blacklist.
The way the kickback scheme worked is like this:
- Multiple Vibes participants were approached and offered a high vote on their posts
- In exchange, they were to provide @verbal-d with a portion of their rewards
- The discussions were held off-chain
- At least one person was asked to be part of this plan and help
- To hide the on-chain trail, other people's accounts were used to launder the funds
- The posts were voted and funds were sent to @verbal-d
- Participants who failed to send funds were reminded
At this time, it is unknown how the Vibes participants who were approached were selected. We spoke to multiple participants. Some were approached, some weren't. The scheme began to unravel when a couple of people who participated in it broke their silence.
To clarify, not all Vibes winners were a part of the scheme - some were approached and rejected partaking. A community poll system was implemented that affected the final results as well as @lordbutterfly being involved in choosing the winners which offset Verbal-d effect on final outcome fully.
As a result, at this time and at this point of the investigation:
- @verbal-d has a permanent blacklisting for fraud (no appeal) for creating, organizing and carrying out this scheme
- @jessicaossom has a regular blacklisting for fraud (appeal possible, current duration not determined) for laundering the kickback funds
The investigation is still ongoing due to the known and potential number of people involved both directly or indirectly.
Vibes competitors who willingly participated in this scheme are banned from being part of any Value Plan budget-funded events/Hive promotional events now and in the future in the role of team members.
This being said, we do thank the individuals who came forward, who will not be named here for their personal safety. We also thank a Hive member who chose to be anonymous who did the bulk of the existing investigation into this matter.
Due to the safety concerns for the people who came forward and those who provided information in follow-up, we will not be publishing screenshots of their interactions with @verbal-d and anyone else.
External Scheme
During our preceding investigation it became apparent that a business was created by @suanetmusic and several others out of Cuba in order to onboard musicians as Vibes participants. The business is called the SBS Art Web3 Academy with an Instagram of https://www.instagram.com/academia_artistas_web3/ and https://artweb3.systeme.io/empieza-hoy
These musicians were not Hive members and did not know about Hive prior to this. The musicians were attracted by a representation of Vibes and Hive as an opportunity gatekept by the academy to make money.
The way the business scheme works is like this:
- People are attracted by a website and Instagram that shows money being waved and sure gains
- They are placed in a WhatsApp group
- They are coached through creating their accounts and making a Vibes post
- They pay a portion of their earnings to the academy on a regular basis
- New victims keep paying the academy without realizing they are being mislead
- New victims don't realize that the academy holds no control over them
At this time, the investigation has not yet revealed to what extent this second scheme was connected to the first scheme.
It should be clear that absolutely no Hive members of Cuban origins were involved in any part of this investigation, including in reporting. No Hive member currently residing in Cuba or originally from Cuba had any part in reporting this.
Please see:
As a result of this investigation so far:
- @suanetmusic has a permanent blacklisting for fraud (no appeal) for creating this scheme
- Further blacklistings are expected as the investigation progresses
We will get in touch with all the victims of this scheme and correct their understanding of the Hive blockchain and ecosystem.
Competition
The Vibes competition has been terminated by @lordbutterfly with no plan to reinstate it. There is no simple way to determine fully all the people that were involved and this choice seems like the only correct one.
The damage incurred is estimated from few hundred to few low thousand HBD that was funneled by the musicians participating in the fraud back to Verbal-d.
Vibes has been a pillar of the Hive music community, onboarding over 1,500 users, peaking at 500 weekly participants, hundreds of active users, and building a thriving creative hub. But over time, corruption and misuse by a few have tainted what was meant to be pure and community-driven.
Out of respect for the vision and the people who made it special, Vibes is shutting down, not in defeat, but in integrity. The music will live on elsewhere on Hive.
Thanks for the update, it was much needed as this is a serious abuse on Hive. I understand the investigation is still ongoing, but can you provide an update to the following:
Sorry for the long list of questions, but I feel they are needed in the scheme of things. Thanks
Its unknown how many. There's 29 accounts on the list in Spaminator right now and that's just for the first scheme. The list is expanding. There may be a third scheme, I don't know yet. This is a very sad situation where people put so much effort into ruining the one on-chain event we had.
I want to be finished with this soon and publish the final list of names. What's unclear is how these people were selected. There are a lot of people who participated in Vibes who were never approached, irrespective of where they live. Others were approached and said no.
I cant say. I know by name 5-6 of them. But im sure theres more. Some arent named because they implicated others or given proof to what Verbal was doing. Theyve been all blacklisted as far i know.
Couple hundred maybe. Some stuff onchain, some offchain. Not easy to track.
This was a great way to utilize the funds, numbers speak for themselves. Others can emulate it, but in terms of my personal oppinion of how I think VP funds should be used... well you can guess what I think about supporting content creators in this manner ever again.
I think thats what the blacklist is for. But a good question.
I dont know how I would give you that list. The active users were visible on the community page. Ofc, most arent active now in Vibes community as i shut it down but you could scroll the community page and see who they are.
Sad news indeed - as I created the first @music-community on Hive / Steemit when started we welcome everyone to post here as well:
https://peakd.com/c/hive-193816/created
BUT - we do not run fancy contests where people earn a lot money - we support what we can. Currently mainly @ylich is helping to maintain what we can with a lack of time but if someone wants to jon and drive more initiatives we are always happy to welcome music guys! We considered some cool contests in the ealry days but simply had no time to run that and lobby for sponsers.
I had such a problem when running photo contests asuch as #SunThursday and #BeachWednesday where organized cheaters made their profits - hence i stopped them.
The more money is on stake, the more fraudsters appear. It is a dilemma.
Only way is to detect them early. In this case maybe some hints were there already, but someone needs to look at them closely.
Agreed - always the same whemoney is involved
That's too bad.
But it was always missing the most important element anyway. Built the stage, paid the acts, did nothing to sell tickets to the show. Yet here, the value of the ticket stays in the supporter's wallet (best deal in the history of entertainment).
That's just Hive in a nutshell for ten years though. Until money starts flowing in the door to cover the costs of content being produced here, content will remain an expense (Holding "earned" HP is still an expense). And people will always be looking for the easy money. Since growing organically as an artist of any kind (content creators were called artists and entertainers before social media), is damn near fucking impossible and you actually have to be good at what you do. A true paying customer does not purchase garbage. See any awesome material around here... ?
Anyway. I highly doubt anyone wants to hear my rants.
Ten years of this shit...
Not surprised to see a group form around the potential earnings either, skimming profits. In life that's called a "record label" and it's no secret the actual artist get the shitty end of the stick, earning 5 to 10% of their true value on average, for decades. The more naive the artist is, the better.
Hey man. Good to see you around. 😎
Yeah dude. Good to see you as well. Shitty this all happened. At a glace, I was able to see the bigger picture from day one, and you know that. I had no problem supporting it.
It's not a fail. It was a try.
It worked really well for what it was. Its just that people will do people things. Selfish, stupid things. The whole idea of supporting people for the sake of supporting people is a utopian sentiment thats utterly flawed. Only sustainable value exchange is worth anything.
From now on im only supporting myself by having the price of Hive go up. 😂
Seeing your rant made my day
Seeing this place pivot after finally recognizing opportunities for disruption, would make my day.
I understand that this situation may have caused concern among Hive community members, but I believe that for any investigation to be fair and complete, all parties involved must be properly heard — and I want to publicly clarify that no one in charge of this investigation has contacted me directly.
For this reason, several days ago I published two official posts:
one explaining that we are not connected in any way to the fraud committed in Vibes, and another one explaining in detail how the subscription model of our academy actually works. I will attach both links below so this information reaches everyone who needs to see it.
As the creator of SBS ART WEB3 ACADEMY I firmly state, once again, that we have never done anything against Hive’s rules or values. Most of our artists participate actively in multiple Hive communities, not only in Vibes, as has been suggested in this annuncement.
All artists who joined the academy through the Free Subscription (which, as I explained in detail in the official post, has a clear reason for being called “free” and for including a temporary commission) were fully aware and in agreement with how the process worked.
More than 40 artists have participated in this program so far, and all have expressed positive opinions about the experience.
The description of our model presented in this post is incorrect.
I remain completely open and available to clarify this situation directly with the investigators about how our academy operates.
I trust that once the facts are fully reviewed, this misunderstanding will be cleared, and our reputation in Hive will remain intact.
Here are the official posts that explain everything in detail:
• Official Statement #1 - SBS Academy are not related to Vibes fraud
• Official Statement #2 – How Sbs Art Academy works and why some of the artists pay a portion of their earnings to us
I am still going through the first scheme and didn't speak to you directly. I did go through the site and Instagram and none of it is acceptable. The artists who joined never had to pay any "subscription" to you. Hive is free to use. We can set up a time to formally speak in the next few days.
I always wonder why there are people who constantly have to exploit systems. How are we ever going to grow with HIVE if there are such 'idiots' who enrich themselves here?
Unfortunately, the topic of growth for HIVE and some top leaders rarely comes up, because how are we supposed to create a healthy ecosystem here in the long term if the community can't manage to pull together. I think HIVE is great, cool, but we are a niche product and much more a small cluster of many good projects and many people who simply exploit this here just to enrich themselves.
How are we going to move HIVE forward together if there are no rules, penalties, and the like here? How is HIVE, including its price, supposed to grow if there is hardly any external advertising, info webinars, speakers, and a proper and easy onboarding system?
I believe, even though I love HIVE and will continue to blog here 100%, that many people here are enriching themselves and those who are striving to build up the community are merely being exploited. ... a pity, truly a pity ...
You cannot always account for the gravity of human stupidity. All these idiots that have participated in this might have gotten miniscule short term benefit but long terms lost all the opportunities that Hive offers.
Thats their punishment. Unfortunately, they also punished all the hundreds of others that didnt participate in this. Hopefully those find their home elsewhere on Hive.
Ultimately, Vibes was just a successful demonstration of a structured approach to the Hive reward systems.
It wasnt special in any way other than via the effort being put into upholding that structure. Its very easily emulated elsewhere.
Not by be though because I am done. I am so done trying to "help" people in this way. 2 years of effort I put in for this to be a success, that benefited so many, and the first opportunity to screw Vibes over was taken by so many of those that benefited the most. Well they wont benefit any more.
There is a penalty and its far more than just being added to a blacklist.
I don't know and never knew VIBES in that way, and perhaps that's a good thing. On the other hand, it makes me question where I, as a HIVER, get to see or hear about things. They have their punishment, they are getting it, and I hope it will be forever and ever.
But for me, it's about something completely different. By the way, I use Gemini to translate into English. How do you ever plan to make HIVE big if a) there are constantly people like this here and if b) so many people are cooking their own soup anyway (i.e., pursuing their own interests)?
If we have our own projects here and there, but we never pull together. The merch from the Value Plan was a great start, but look at how money is sometimes handled here. I'm not the HIVE expert, but I am the blogger and user here, and there should be more of those, right?
Well, you are right – keep going, look forward, and maybe we will see each other at a HIVE Meet Up in Vienna. The next one is on November 20th at 7 PM.
Well, i can tell you from my perspective what I intend to do. Not spend any more time trying to help people, (as harsh as that might sound), my trust levels are at negative values and will stay that way far into the future. I want to rather focus on investment and how to bring in more investors here. Multiple ways to do that.
Onboarding, others can deal with that. I showed them the way to do it, a way that works, onboarding UX i cant fix personally, never could.
Its on others from now on.
Okayyyyyyy mr. you are completly right :) thanks a lot ...
Think about how we can make HIVE big together.
Is there a way to start legal action against those who did this?
Ugh, see. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the damage is probably just a few hundreds bucks they essentially stole from other musicians via preferable votes, and those votes are only 1 out of 3 or 4 variables. Polls being 1 variable, me being another variable, list of 15 potential winners being another.
So it would be hard to determine how much and where they effected the results. You can only track a few transactions and testimonies from people.
Can you take legal action against someone that sent the judge 100 bucks? Maybe. Gotta find what jurisdiction theyre in. Is it worth the time and effort though?
Verbal D knows I could do significant damage to his personal life if I wanted to, but the piece of shit has a bunch of kids. If I ruined his life over this id probably be a scumbag like he is which is why im not going to do it.
For me, it's about the principle. It would be okay to denounce these people... right? :) have a great hivetime - keep going
Denounce sure. Anything more than that, I cant stoop to their level. Theyre essentially idiots that shot themselves in the foot.
It would be kind of like beating up someone thats mentally challenged because they do mentally challenged things.
Dear @lordbutterfly
Receive a warm greeting.
For months, I have been a consistent participant in Vibes Music. I did this because I believed in this space, and it was a great opportunity to grow and meet people, rhythms, and good music from all over the world.
The reputation I have earned on Hive is the product of my work and the good relationships I have cultivated in the different communities.
Today, I regret the announcement of the end of this competition as much as you do. In my last participation in Week 42, with a beautiful composition by the Cuban master Ernesto Lecuona, entitled "Comparsa," I was announced as the first-place winner.
However, given the circumstances expressed in your statements, I wish to emphatically state that all my participations and nominations in this contest were done honestly. I never engaged in bribery, nor was I contacted by anyone to do so.
I welcome the fact that this space can be audited, and they can corroborate that what I have stated here is the truth.
I reiterate that I never paid for someone to favor me, and no one ever asked me to pay them to vote for another person. I defend my values, my reputation, and my truth.
I have been an honest participant throughout my time in Vibes and in other communities, and I have expressed my support for Hive for years because I believe from my heart that Hive is capable of transforming lives.
@verbal-d was one of the judges at Steemit Open Mic, where one of the organizers stole the prizes. That alone was a bad omen...
Will there be any reward for the winners of the last contest, who show no signs of being involved in the scam? I believe that would be important for maintaining a good image in the community.
It's sad to see this. I did not get too involved in Vibes, but it had great potential to bring more people to Hive. I see music as a key area for the platform. It's a real shame when people abuse the system and it is hard to prevent when a few people conspire like this.
I support various musicians on Hive with my votes and we can keep on doing that. I know many appreciate what support they get. Everyone needs to act honestly as cheats tend to get found out.
@lordbutterfly it breaks my heart to read this. Vibes has been so important for me to choose to stay in Hive.
I know I play a kind of music that is hard for the mainstream audience to appreciate, but it's always been a challenge and a great opportunity for me to show myself to all these people. Receiving some big payouts made me feel finally appreciated for what I do.
Through Vibes I created some strong connections with other musicians that developed even outside of Hive.
It's such a shame, but I understand. I hope we all can find a new way to do something with the same impact in the future.
You did a great job and many people are grateful to you for your dedication 👏 peace and see you around ✌️
Your entries were always great. I really hope you find your place on Hive even if it might not be with Vibes. Theres still great communities and great music to be found and rewarded.
Nice. We needed this like a hole in the head. After pouring money in holes in Ghana, sponsoring parties in Venezuela, blowing money on rally cars, now this! Fantastic! What's next?
You forgot that documentary and the racing bike 😖
Oh yeah, those too.
Totally agree there is no accountability and projects that benefit Hive should only be considered. Boreholes offer zero benefit along with a rally car that comes last.
Stealing is bad.
Thank you for this update on Vibes. I was very saddened to learn that a contest that showcased Hive musicians and singers has fallen victim to corruption.
I appreciate that I was allowed to win honestly. Personally, I would like to have a list of those involved in the bribes, because as a Curator I have doubts about some users. I know that other users, like me, were transparent and honest in Vibes, but it is not clear to me who was involved in the bribes. Who paid to win in Vibes?
I would also like to mention that during many rounds, I saw how @guitarmcy participated with excellent entries and never received first place. It is a shame that just when he wins, he does not have access to the prize because of what happened.
I hope that justice prevails and that music on Hive can recover from this huge setback.
Insane, but would be a pity to end the competition because of this. Think it is a net positive to have such a competion on hive.
Is it? How do you know?
It created engagement and was also advertised outside of hive, also damage doesn't seem so high to me, compared to the 15,168 hbd printed every day via the dhf / hive proposals and hive printed via hbd conversions. As far as I know only author/curator rewards were misused, no additional hive printed via the contest.
Sure. Anyone can emulate it. Its just a more structured approach to the Hive reward systems. Its not really special in any other way than through the effort put into upholding the structure. Its time intensive for sure, but not crazy hard to do.
But theres no way im continuing it though.
Fool me once shame on you, you dont get a second time.
The fact that all these people had the opportunity to actually win some money here and grow along with everyone but decided to ruin everything for a small amount, says it all. Ungrateful shitheads. People are too greedy and always thing they are smarter that everyone else..
You can steal for a little bit, and think you are smarter than everyone else, but you always eventually get caught. Long term, they lost far more than what they gained in the short term. I guess its because they only are capable of short term thinking is why they go do these stupid things.
This is truly unbelievable.
woah hard to see hive succeed with all these things happening. with this happening, hopefully there are people looking into every project now, ongoing and future ones to seeing if there's something off going on.
Wow! I always found the rewards quite excessive for joining a contest, but this makes it even worse 😥
It shows once again that when there is money to be gained, people are commiting fraud 🤨