In the world of cryptocurrency, we often see allegations of foul play. Most of the time, these claims are unfounded and based on nothing but mere speculation. One of such accusations revolves around F2Pool and the Status ICO. Some people claim the mining pool bought heavily into this ICO and prevented the rest of Ethereum users from doing the same. It’s unclear how much truth there is to these allegations, but it is problematic.
What is F2Pool Involvement in the Status ICO?
That is the question on a lot of people’s mind right now. It is evident something was amiss during this entire ICO, as a lot of investors simply could not get through. More troubling, they couldn’t even get their transactions confirmed on the network. At first, this was blamed on a major network backlog, but it appears said backlog may have been created deliberately.
It is important to note the following evidence is only speculative right now, yet it paints a worrisome picture. According to one Reddit user, the Status ICO was tampered with by none other than F2Pool. The team has allegedly created different ETH addresses, all of which were funded with around 100 ETH each. Once these transactions were completed, only tx from these addresses were mined by F2Pool. This apparently began half an hour before the ICO.
Once the Status ICO officially began, the first block discovered by F2Pool included all transactions from the addresses they allegedly created themselves. Considering F2Pool controls 26.6% of the network hashrate, it is evident they were certainly in a position to successfully game the system. That does not necessarily mean they effectively did so, yet the “coincidences” are starting to add up, to say the least.
Unfortunately, this type of behavior caused a major issue for the Ethereum network itself. A lot of transactions were stuck, effectively causing the network to slow down. Services such as MyEtherWallet were caught in the fire and were unable to broadcast transfers to the blockchain. This also meant anyone relying on MEW to participate in this ICO had a very, very small change to get a transfer through within the allotted time. This type of behavior by F2Pool, assuming it is true, will hurt Ethereum as a whole that much is evident.
Many people are taken aback by the evidence presented to back up these claims. Many people would expect mining pools to be unbiased when it comes to cryptocurrency ICOs, but that is not effectively the case, by the look of things. It is also a clear example of how cryptocurrency ICOs on the Ethereum network are in severe danger of being “gamed,” which will not help anyone. Moreover, this news is quite horrible for Status too, as a large portion of their raised capital belongs to one group of buyers.
All of this goes to show there is a lot of trickery involved when it comes to cryptocurrency ICOs. When mining pools exploit their position to not only buy large amounts of tokens, but also to prevent others from doing so, things will collapse rather quickly. It is sad to see popular wallet services such as MyEtherWallet get caught up in this mess as well. The team is doing what they can, but they are certainly fighting an uphill battle right now.
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