The Whale Watches Spotted Moby Dick
No doubt The crypto world will be fully aware of the recent goings on ( or not goings on) on the Whaleshares platform.
A lot of you will know more than I. But after putting in 2 years of my life in building up a profile, working with fantastic people and never once taking anything from the platform myself, it looks as though it has all been for nothing but a pipe dream.
The story from the surface is that some account’s posting keys where made public and used to SPAM the platform with explicit images. This lead to several witnesses shutting down their servers and therefore locking out the platform.
all this is true!
Well on the surface.
Let’s Dive Deeper
pixabay |The following chapters are of my opinion of the situation and does not speak for anyone else who may use the platform.
Back in 2018, Whaleshares launched without a hitch. Suddenly the promised land was before us and we filled our boots with its reward.
There was plenty of updates and a great team of people keeping us informed of the developments. Voting for witnesses was not an easy task as they was so many to choose from and almost all brought different views and aspects to the platform and its members.
The platform was growing in popularity and curation shows where aplenty. People started creating their own tokens and building projects within the platform.
Fast forward 18 month later and the platform is waiting for its biggest Hardfork of all. HF4.
Suddenly the whole concept of upvotes where gone and tokens where no longer worthwhile. This seen the end to one of my projects.
The mystery box
In summary The Mystery Box was a contest that gave away alt tokens which (when spent) gave you upvotes on your posts. But since upvotes where no longer a thing then these tokens where not worth hoarding.
Hardfork 4 introduced us to a new way of rewarding posts Called tipping and (like communities on Hive) introduced Pods.
Tipping uses a separate pot from your stake to tip other uses posts. This pot had to be filled from your whalestake or daily rewards.
The bigger the whale you are the bigger the tip you can afford to give away but of course that is if you are generous enough to give away your own stake. Also the bigger you are the bigger the daily reward you receive so you would be lucky if those big whales where even looking at posts anymore or just clicking the claim button and turning away.
If you failed to claim your daily reward then that would be added to the Dev Fund pot to help towards the future of the platform.
I did like the new front end and still feel that it’s the best and only good part of HF4.
My views must of been shared through the platform as what was once a thriving ocean had now had the feeling of being a microbe in the Atlantic. The membership was dwindling and the value plummeted.
So we looked to our Development team and platform witnesses for answers...
Things Will Only Get Better
I don’t know wether it was ignorance, intolerance, laziness or a true disbelief that they had completely fucked the platform over that much that they was not a way back.
What ever it was, we as some of the most supportive members left in the platform where not being listened to.
Even most of the witnesses would not hear our views or knock on the door of a Dev and ask them a question.
We just received a cold hearted and vicious snub like...
if you don’t like it then leave!
And so a lot of people did.
This is how it came to people doing stupid things like posting their keys to the public and trying to upset the platform in every way they could.
Thee of little faith
Along Came Penis Gate
Surely enough the spam started and we where subject to pod accounts spamming the platform with Pornographic images with no way of muting.
The pitch forks where out but this time the witnesses shared our views and turned to the development team for answers.
Those answers never came
And the one by one, witnesses started to shutdown their servers.
Suddenly their was not enough witnesses to to keep the platform running and by no surprise the Dev team shot up from their armchairs and called an emergency meeting.
After a few hours of passing blame and speaking shit, an agreement (peace treaty) was met and a team of developers agreed to patch up the problem and relaunch.
We lost some good witnesses due to penis gate and may never see those people fulfil that role again.
What Happens Now?
Well that is what we all want to know!
Currently the front end is up but it is view only and the team is working on things in the background.
And as we are all left watching the community blame each other and tear strips of people for being honest and opinionated, I feel they may not be a community left to salvage.
Time will tell and I will be there ( as I always have been) to watch this shit show either come through this stronger or continue to sink to the depths of the crypto ocean like many have before it.
I stopped posting on Whaleshares a LONG time ago, it just seemed to be another steem clone and all got real confusing when you earned tokens that you'd redeem for an upvote by going through some convoluted process to set up an account on bitshares... why not just upvote?
Couldn't see the difference between it and steem at the time to be honest and then the more of these stories I heard, the less I wanted to be a part of. Then the price went kaput and now it sounds like the game is over really (didn't realise it was still going over there)!
That was some time ago. Yes it is still going ( for now anyways) but the similarities to steem have long gone.
Fair enough! So many platforms, so little time!
Sorry to see you leave Nicky, I was out myself due to injury but am fully back now and members like yourself are the type I'd like to help return to whaleshares. If the community fails it will be due to the effort of everyone; those who walk away and stay are equally to blame.
I just couldn't maintain all the platforms I was on and had to make choices about which ones to stick with and focus on. I've learned the hard way with health issues!
They have never been against cross-posting, just so you know
I am on Whaleshares then but stopped posting because the HF made it difficult to earn anything there. Regarding the spamming, is it of the same kind which happened on Blurt? The same person?
I hear it’s the same on blurt as it is on Whaleshares. Not that I’m on blurt though. As for being the same person I could not say as the person behind the spamming is using various accounts.
I actually found Whaleshares promising then. But they seemed unenthusiastic with it getting listed on exchanges except on Bitshares. They could've done better.
The spamming, that's a sad part. A lot are thinking those may be the same person using dummy accounts. Everyone knew of the NSFW spamming on steem.