It ll started with good intentions and and a desire to make money. It was late 2018 and Jeff Kirdeikis decided to launch his own social media network. Until then, Jeff was running a Facebook group, focused on cryptocurrencies. The group had all the necessary ingredients in order to be successful, airdrops, shitcoins, new 'interviews' promoting new projects etc. Always using his referral links of course

And he would go and and get 'interviews' from unknown developers and obscure Projects. Those developers would then post on their websites, blogs, Telegram groups, social media profiles etc the link to the interview. Vanity is a powerful thing.  
Also, it was good for business. So new users would discover the group and become members. Now Jeff started to post and interview more known projects. It is easier if you have a group with tens of thousands of members. And those people shared the interview with their communities. More members joined the FB group. Slowly closed doors opened, and getting interviews from bigger names was easier.

With those interviews Jeff made some connections and at some point thought that everyone else is doing it, why not me? 


"engineer ecosystems of empowerment ... the future of distributive design"

Before Uptrennd, Jeff was involved with other "successful" projects like the Clout ICO scam, CrowdMachine scam and Hex2t hack, later renamed to Axion.

He founded the company using his own money. $200-250.000 he said. Because who can remember how much he put in his first company, right? $50.000 is no big deal. 

But don't worry, Jeff has a lot of money and can afford to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Uptrennd was going to be different and would have four basic principles: 

• • Distribution of Wealth 

• • Freedom of Speech 

• • Equality of Opportunity 

• • Data Privacy

It was a promising although not original idea.   A free speech social media network where users are rewarded with cryptocurrency for their content.  Steem was the first project who conceived and executed this idea and was king back then.  


Jeff claimed on multiple occasions that Uptrennd was the second platform launched after Steem but that is simply not true. Not to mention that Uptrennd was never on blockchain, although it was supposed to happen and was promised many times.   
He chose the trendy name Uptrennd (legally the company has a different name, 11045601 Canada Inc.).


He registered the domain name Uptrennd.com on July 11 2018 at 5 a clock in the morning. For some reason he chose to hide the Who Is data and you can't actually see under who's name the domain was registered or the email that was used.   The contract for the Uptrennd token was created months later. 2 days later the ownership of the contract was transferred to another address. That address today holds 590 million 1UP tokens, 59% of the total supply. On December 2018 the official announcement was made on Bitcoin Talk forum. A landing page was setup and on August 24 the Internet Archive captures the first snapshot. On March 2019 we can see the Live version. And on July 24 Coingecko starts tracking the trading activity.  
I am not sure who designed the original version but on October 2019 we can see a company from Pakistan anouncing a partnership with Uptrennd. 

The company was launched in 2018 and have also been involved on other projects of Uptrennd employees Like Numio, XIO, Blockzero, Tiply Tank and Phoenix DAO.   For some reason the Case Studies have disappeared from their website. And there's only one post under Partnerships. Some posts mentioning the partnership have also been deleted.


The company charged $25-49 per hour for Blockchain projects, when other companies will charge thousands.

Coincidentally, the same company announced that it rebranding to their 180 Twitter followers 1 day before Jeff anouncing that Uptrennd is shutting down . But at least they tweeted as much as possible about the other projects of other Uptrennd team members.

Jeff created at least 6 more 1UP tokens before that. Here are 4 1UPs. They were not cooked as the chef wanted, so here are 2 more.

Later Uptrennd joins MouseBelt Blockchain Accelerator.   They would help with funds and providing developers and marketing.  Mostly university students who were trying to get practice.

They invest $250.000 on each project they choose to support. 

Apart from that, Jeff announced on Twitter that he got another $200.000 from another investor. There was "major progress and mobile apps on route". Jeff appeared on dozens of interviews promoting the website and soon it became popular. Well, popular in Pakistan and Nigeria. Because the rest of the planet was not impressed. And everywhere Jeff would talk about free speech and the ability of people making money on Uptrennd.
The rules were simple, and among others you couldn't promote cryptocurrencies, unless you are Jeff of course. He added his affiliate links in the same page. And we are talking about the official Rules page. Later the page URL was removed from the bottom of the website. Same happened with How it works page. Meanwhile, Jeff is telling people to keep their Crypto safe (using his referral links of course) and at the same time sharing publicly the password for his Facebook page.

Later, users were allowed to post content unrelated to cryptocurrencies but noone bothered to update the Rules.   One the How it Works page we can see the websites where people can trade their tokens. Only those exchanges have removed 1UP long ago. Only Uniswap and ProBit still have 1UP listed. Again nobody bothered to update the page. But their liquidity is so low, that a $34 dollar transaction, can send the price 90% up as we see today.

Users are told again and again that nobody will delete their content. Everyone on Uptrennd knows that this is not true. And yet Uptrennd official profiles would post daily about censorship and free speech.

Soon the website was full of spam and plagiarism. Stock photos and good morning posts would get thousands of likes, and every Like was supposed to be a 1UP token. (In fact it's more complicated than that).   And Jeff later accused the users for selling their tokens. You know, the earnings they were promised that would drive them to "financial freedom". It was the reason he said that the price dropped. In fact, from the 5.500 users who withdrew their tokens, only a few of them would actually sell. Most of them earned a few thousands at best and didn't even have enough ETH to pay the transaction fee. In order to sell $50 worth of 1UP they would have to spend $50 on the transaction fee. Uptrennd employees would sell millions in a single transaction and those kind of trades had really an impact in price. Jeff would not use automated bots to fight spam and plagiarism because it was "very expensive". For some reason Uptrennd couldn't have developers paid in 1UP or use bots as Steem, or other smaller projects did.

But that shouldn't be a problem. Because 1UP value didn't come from quality content as many people thought but from the ads.

The ads that were waiting for months for approval and to this day some of them are. And if a junior Guardian dared to remind them that, he was told it's not his business. That's the level of communication on higher levels. That's how toxic the climate was and the level of amateurism.

He would post frequently on Uptrennd and announced many big changes, cooperations and updates. Reading those posts today and knowing that most of it didn't happen is painful and hilarious together. Not to mention the whitepaper.

 
The 2020 roadmap is a bittersweet memory. And it was still pinned on top of the official Twitter account of Uptrennd until a few days ago. The post about the big changes coming was shared by only 2 users on Facebook. The Twitter account has removed any mention of the app and "something big is coming" posts, but you can still see some of them on Facebook 

Even the company who supported Uptrennd financially removed it from their exchange. Was it even listed? When they announced they were hiring, Jeff as a true professional just created a free Google site and the positions of 2020 are still open. 



And then, in August 2019 1UP exploded. Trading volume went from $30.000 to 2.7 million. When Senior Moderators asked what was going on, they were told that it was a "glitch". 





They didn't bother asking where was this glitch, on Uptrennd, Ethereum blockchain, an exchange?  And of course didn't bother checking the blockchain transactions. They never lie. They didn't wonder how do you go from $30.000 to 3 millions in transactions volume without any reason.



Maybe they were busy posting shitcoin Airdrops in the Moderation group on Telegram.

Or bragging to junior Guardians that they had access to the Slack group or that they were members of Uptrennd for many many years, like since 2019.

We are talking about the kind of Moderators who in 2020, working on a Crypto project, see a pump and dump and don't recognize it. The kind of Moderators who had no idea about blockchain and discovered cryptocurrencies when they joined Uptrennd. And those who did see what was happening, didn't push for answers. Why shake the boat after all when that salary keeps coming. They were perfectly fine with the situation.

Today they all claim they knew nothing. And yet here's what another moderator had to say on their group.



And then, team members started to disappear. And finally Jeff himself disappeared. Now you see he had a new company, TrustSwap. 



And even removed any reference of Uptrennd from his Bio everywhere. Now his Twitter profile was all about Trust Swap, all day, every day. To this day nobody knows who dumped their holdings that summer. But it was not the end. 


The website continued to operate although many quality content creators left. Those in high positions still left? Talking on Slack and mostly in private about the mess but never took any decision or initiative. They we "Senior" in name and salary and it was enough for them.

He should explain who was "we".

Meanwhile, as his own company was failing, Jeff would give advice to others.

The logic back then was growth and numbers. So some things were tolerated until the good morning posts and stock photos just became unbearable. People started to leave, mostly for 4 reasons. Low quality content, the token price kept dropping. They had to wait for weeks in order to get their withdrawal approved. And the moderation became tougher. Now it was difficult to earn with garbage posts because moderators would downvote or delete them and you could get blocked from posting for weeks. But there was a problem. The average moderator would make $50 per month in theory for their work, paid in 1UP tokens. And the amount they would get was based on the price of the previous month. As the price was lower every month, they always earned less than $50. But that was not enough. If they tried to withdraw and sell the $50 worth of tokens they would have to pay huge ETH fees. Usually more than the amount of 1UP itself. Also moderators didn't have any priority on withdrawals and had to wait for the withdrawals like everyone else. And the worst part, instead of the system being on a smart contract, Jeff had to approve every payment. And he was gone. The solution to this could have been a simple blockchain change for the token as dozens of other projects did. And it was easier for Uptrennd because the posts and user accounts are not on blockchain, only the token was on Ethereum.






Jeff said that Uptrennd is "the most engaged blockchain-based social media platform in the world" even if it was not blockchain based. And he would give as a source an article on Wall Street ...Select which itself copied from a Newswire website where one of the Uptrennd employees posted a press release!  









We are talking about the man who gave a 5 star review to a shitcoin called Bravo, but only 3 to EOS and BNB. We all know where BNB and EOS stand, meanwhile here is Bravocoin.   

In the end, some of the moderators were not motivated enough to sit for hours every day and clean the endless spam. Although some of them did of course. They were the ones who did it because they believed in the Project or simply were happy having a Guardian badge and the power that comes with it.    And some of them even used it to grow and make their profiles popular. Promoting shitcoins, useless apps, ICO scams, garbage giveaways and Airdrops for Projects that disappeared a few days later. Using their x20 upvote power in order to get new followers etc. The homepage feed would show only posts by moderators or high level accounts. Although Jeff would say in the early days that he was interested about the user opinion and their feedback, they were never asked. 




Many features were announced but never materialized. The Twitter official account had the 2020 roadmap as a pinned tweet for months The person who was posting almost every day doesn't seem to understand how ridiculous this was.



A senior Guardian later said that the Twitter account of Uptrennd was suspended and they were using Buffer app to circumvent the limitation but I am not sure about that. Why would Twitter do that? And leave it like that for months. The only reason Twitter will shut down high profile Crypto related profiles is if they start promoting shitcoins and scams. And why they didn't tell the Community about it? Thousands of Uptrennd users would take action in order to solve the issue.



The Android app always coming but never arriving? This for example was posted a few days before Jeff anouncing that Uptrennd was shutting down. Why push that narrative to the last moment?

And how many companies do you know who claim to have hundreds of thousands of users and yet only 24 are testing the Beta version?  A Beta tester said has seen only 7-8 profiles actually using the app all this time.  In the end they released it 2 days after anouncing the closure. And everyone understood why. 




One day $38.000 the next 1.7 million.

When Jeff announced some changes a month ago. What changes? Didn't mention any. He didn't make the announcement on his Uptrennd profile, or even his Twitter profile. He just replied to a user saying that he gave a comprehensive update on Axion, a company where he says is a "bagholder".



The usual daily volume of around $30.000 suddenly started to climb. The amounts traded speak for themselves. One day is $45.000 and the next $450.000.




Jeff appeared for 4 minutes that day in a 8 hours video and just to say that the platform is full of spam, flowers and good morning posts. Which is not true of course and if he had visited Uptrennd all these months, would have seen it himself.


Nobody was spamming his Twitter, in fact he blocked anyone mentioning Uptrennd 

And then some Uptrennd moderators joined the Telegram group of this project called Trodl and there was some whispering about the possibility of merging or rebranding. Trodl is a rebranding itself of a failed project called Coinmarketfeed. They had an ICO although the founder was writing against them and shut down without officially announcing it on their social media profiles. A few days ago they had their second IDO, that's what they call them now. And as usual the price of TRO dropped immediately within the first hours.

And then on March another dump. It lasted for another month but with smaller amounts.

And finally on May 2 Jeff suddenly appeared on Uptrennd anouncing its "evolution". What that meant? The website would shut down and the 1UP token would be given to a new platform called Trodl where Jeff is ...strategic partner and advisor. And Trodl team says he will not get paid. So, Jeff abandoned the "most engaged blockchain based social media network" where he held millions of dollars in their token, for a job as an advisor where he will work for free?
Users would get some bread crumbs that Jeff called airdrop. Trying so hard to sugarcoat the news that he tried to present 1 'airdrop' as 2.
1UP price just touched the bottom in minutes. Although the token was supposed to continue to work any there was even an "Airdrop" for users migrating there, people just were not interested. You can see the number of downvotes on Jeff's post although a part of them is from Guardians who used their x20 vote power to show their dissatisfaction.

Trodl coin the day of the Announcement

And all these may sound a little far fetched and paranoid but judging from the past you just get that ...feeling, you know.


But someone like Jeff wouldn't have a problem with people thinking, after all Jeff was a "freedom of speech" champion.

Uptrennd social media profiles would post every day about freedom of speech and censorship.






Unless you speak about Jeff of course. Then he would block you everywhere and would delete user posts and account although he claimed that this would never happen.


I hope at some point the Uptrennd users will learn what was the secret deal with Trodl and what Jeff earned out of it.  In any case, they both claim to have no control of 1Up tokens. 

For Curate for example he got one and a half million XCUR tokens, around 1/4 of the total supply in circulation. The token is called XCUR by the way because CUR is gone. And to this day some people say it was a scam. They could say that TrustSwap owns those coins or that the company just locked them there. But the fact remains that Jeff's wallets hold a large amount of that coin.  

Curate will even launch its own stablecoin. And guess who is pushing it 

Other red flags are the LinkedIn page where if you go back you will see posts about a company that made doors. Did Jeff buy this profile?


  Sometimes people buy older profiles for prestige and Followers. 



Or because they want to hide something. 

 
These are only some of the ridiculous old posts we can see on the LinkedIn official page.

Uptrennd had a control panel for setting up the price and until a few days ago it was sitting on a public subdomain and the team discovered only when a junior Guardian reported it. Another page allowed them to burn the coins of any address holding 1UP.

He was told that it was just for testing, back in the old days. But on the other hand, they weren't completely sure. Heck, they didn't even know those pages existed. In any case I have never seen anything like it and don't know what exactly Jeff wanted to test. Because it would be a huge scandal if it was not for testing.



Remember those 140.000 users of Uptrennd Jeff keeps saying in early interviews? Yeah, that was the number of members on his Facebook group. And some people say that it was these users who funded the creation of Uptrennd, an unofficial ICO, where some members are reported to have paid $5 per 1 1UP promised riches and easy money.
Elsewhere we are told that Uptrennd has 640.000 members and yet on Etherscan you will see that only 5.671 have ever withdrawan their tokens on personal wallets.
Here's the About page from 2019 talking about the 140.000 and the app that didn't exist until yesterday.

But if you check the official Stats page you will see that users were never more than 150.000 and the active daily users were around 4.000




And here's the page where users were encouraged to stake their 1UP. Don't know how many will manage to get them back or even remember they deposited there.


And the promises that you alone own your content and that your data will never be shared are simply lies. In fact the Terms page looks like someone just copy pasted 3 different versions and just changed the name of the company. Same with the Privacy page. Only there the company is called Uptrennd and we are given a very professional email for contact.

Everipedia page, where you have to pay in order to post. Let me guess who published that "came to live".

Maybe it was the same person who misspelled the name of TrustSwap. After all he launched TrustSwap 20 days after he had the idea. What was the idea? Make another Uniswap clone.

Curate where Jeff is a partner and advisor. And here's an article about CUR their old token saying that it was a scam.

Here's someone removing millions of 1UP of liquidity from Uniswap using the main Uptrennd wallet and at the same time telling users that everything is normal and 1UP tokens will continue to work the same on Trodl. Jeff now has $1.500.000 worth of 1UP and owns 60% of the coins in circulation.



Unless it's not Jeff who is controlling Uptrennd. What? Yes I know, sounds crazy but here's what a team member posted on a Telegram group. (They changed the name and using the former Uptrennd group in order to promote their own projects.)

So, now we have an "incubator", who was paid in 1UP tokens for their services they were supposed to provide for free, controlling Uptrennd main wallet and a smaller one and deciding thay they should burn more than 50% of the tokens in circulation. And tell the community nothing about it. 

I asked that team member if Mousbelt was the company she was talking about but she only said that there is a deal with Trodl. Someone else asked the same in the group and was kicked. 

I asked on Twitter both Trodl and Mousebelt but didn't get an answer. Then I joined Mousbelt Telegram group (I have been kicked from Trodl group). And found this, a dead group. 

Then I joined the Trodl announcement channel. Again, a dead group where even the  admin left. 

Finally, don't forget that the domain name expired in a few days. Did that play any part? Who knows.

But someone should answer these questions:

• Are we talking about Mousebelt?
• If not, controls that wallet?
• Why would an incubator control Uptrennd wallet?
• Who gave them control to that wallet?
• Who took the decision to burn those coins?
• Why not inform the community about it?
• Who will be the biggest holder after the burning?

And so, thousands of users are waiting in the dark, watching the slow death of their platform without the ability to talk or express their opinion. While others enjoy the fruits of their energy and investment. 

What Jeff doesn't understand is that people are not angry because Uptrennd failed but because of the lies and hipocricy. He abandoned Uptrennd and returned months later just anouncing the closure. And all this time he and other core team members laughing at their face with their "something big is coming" BS. 

I mean would you abandon a project you put $200.000 from your own pocket? Where the TrustSwap money came from? Where the 250.000 + 200.000 were spent? If Uptrennd's main problem was spam, why didn't he hire a few more moderators? Why the app development took forever if $100.000 were thrown into it? Nobody believes it and users already asked him to give any proof he has for those numbers. Or that he was paying $10.000 for web hosting. 

Jeff wrote 3 times that he is giving the platform for free to Moderators. 

But guess what happened when one of them said OK, I'm in for that. Suddenly Jeff Jeff decided to give it for free, only you had to create everything new.

"Upvoting is free” Our ethos. And Ikigai, Gestalt, Meraki and Existentialism as his Twitter profile says. Because what kind of a man you are if you don't write 4 different life philosophies in your social media Bio?

Thank you everyone for reading. Life is good…