INVESTING IN DeFi TOKENS IS RISKY
DON'T INVEST WHAT YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO LOSE
In this article I'm going to walk through my "due diligence" research of Tenset. Please feel free to point out if I'm missing anything, and also feel welcome to come to a different conclusion than I do. Just like anything else you read on the internet.
Disclaimer over.
Tenset (10set) is a Polish DeFi token based on Ethereum's ERC20 protocol. Their plan is to tie the price of the 10set token to a group of cryptocurrencies (in their 'second phase') and stocks (in their 'third phase'). The below image, taken from their whitepaper displays what they intend to hold in the initial portfolio.
The token will also be "highly deflationary". Each transaction will be charged a 2% fee which will then be split: 1%will be immediately divided between all token holders using Reflect.finance, and the other 1% will be automatically burned. The smart contract will stop the automatic burning process once the token reaches 2,100,000 10set tokens, or 1% of the maximum supply, though that is event is a good distance into the future.
Their long term plan is interesting in its similarity to other successful investment companies:
Our goal is to operate on principles similar to a hedge fund. We create a pool of passive income streams from assets such as cryptocurrencies and dividend shares from established companies. It is a unique solution, and we want to optimize and automate every aspect of it.
This process could be another good connecting area for traditional investors who don't understand cryptocurrencies: it will simply be, to them, an ETF that's purchased as a cryptocurrency.
Is it legit?
I am no expert. So I DuckDuckGo'd for "how to tell a DeFi scam" and educated myself a little more than I have in the past. I'll snag the simple questions that are explained in this Medium post by YIELD App:
1: An anonymous and inexperienced team
Their initial team is listed in the 'teams' section of their website, some of whose LinkedIn pages are connected.
- Jonasz Miara has LinkedIn posts, all crypto/Tenset related going back two months
- Michal Bajdor has LinkedIn posts, some unrelated, going back 1 year
- Michal Pomykala has LinkedIn comments going back 2 years
- Gabriel Domanowski has LinkedIn 'likes' going back 2 years.
- Aleksander Szczepaniak has LinkedIn posts going back six months
- Thor Matthiesen has LinkedIn posts going back one month
- Andrey Ovcharenko is listed as the CEO in the Alexa-unranked website Smartcontract.life
- Dalip Xhelilaj is, according to this Goldenline.pl account, an Albanian Real Estate specialist.
- Kento Kajimoto, as a Japanese man, had many results in a language I couldn't read. However, YouTube connected his name with this account with videos as old as 4 years ago.
- Jaro Barnik's LinkedIn profile has 'likes' going back four years. His LinkedIn profile wasn't connected to the Tenset page, but a DuckDuckGo search came up with the account that has the same image attached to it.
- Frank Obinwa didn't seem to have any really good results of the search, though there is an interesting Nigerian Embassy in Canada webpage with his name attached to it documenting comments made in 2014. No guaranteed connection.
2: Over-promising and under delivering
There aren't any promises being made that I can see. There's no "Buy NOW for $1 get 1,000,000% returns!" bullshit. There's their whitepaper, their team, their plan, and their token (On Etherscan). They even have their code up on a GitHub page.
3: Capitalizing on others' success
They quote that they use Reflect.finance, but their plan for that system goes vastly beyond what the Reflect.finance system does. And Reflect.finance isn't a huge project.
4: Avoiding relevant questions
In their Whitelist Signup email they say that you can ask quetions in the Telegram group, but I can't find anywhere to ask on Telegram (though I admit that I have little experience with Telegram). They have an FAQ section of their homepage, but I can't find anywhere on the website to contact the developers. You could use LinkedIn to contact their founders, or send a message to their YouTube channel or Twitter page, but if you message them there they don't have to post answers publicly, and they don't have any visible content responding to questions. They seem to fail this question.
5: Pushing too hard for funding
I see a BUNCH of YouTube cryptopeople with Tenset sponsored videos that have been put out in the last few weeks. They're missing a LOT of places to advertise - especially here on Publish0x (I ain't getting paid for this). You can't buy their token on Uniswap yet, and Coingecko doesn't even have the price tracked.
Conclusion
In my uneducated opinion this seems legit, even though they did fail the "ask us questions" part of the scam-avoidance checklist. There's some solid backup, especially the GitHub page, for the case that this is not a scam. I intend to put some of my hard-mined ETH into it, but don't let that sway you.
The second phase presale happens at 7:00 PM GMT+1 time THIS SUNDAY! If you're already signed up, you're in! If not, you'll have to wait until "open season" on March 14th.
The signup welcome email says:
We recommend you set a reminder on your smartphone 15 minutes before the start. The order you sign up for our Whitelist does not matter; everyone on the list has equal chances to participate.
AGAIN
DON'T INVEST WHAT YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO LOSE
The Future Is Digital, my friends.
