There has been news surrounding NEO that a group of developers is planning to fork NEO and create NEO Super with the ticker NEOX. The project has nothing to offer in terms of service except a wallet.
Many community members fear that this might be an attempt to scam NEO users out of their private keys. The fear stems from the fact that it is common practice to input private keys when accessing NEO wallets. It would be quite convenient for scammers to open a wallet service that actually interacts with the NEO blockchain and then use the input private keys for moving user funds.
The Investigation
A reporter doing investigation on NEO Super has found that the project is not really a fork of the NEO Blockchain but rather an effort to “snapshot” the NEO chain and utilise it on the Ethereum Network. This will create mining opportunities and many more benefits. What they are aiming to do is take the “most successful” elements of NEO and utilise them as in the form of a standard ERC-20 token contract on the Ethereum chain.
But just the idea of NEO Super trying to carry out such a stunt does not necessarily make it a next generation blockchain. There are too many red flags regarding the project which side it with other crypto scams.
Red Flags
On further investigation, it was found that the “NEO Super” twitter account has only 39 followers. Also, another twitter account associated with it has been clocked by twitter. Moving to the technical, the project’s GitHub repository has made little to no changes or commits to the NEO codebase.
One reporter noted that their Linkedin account definitely blew the siren. He said:
“Because with a closer look at their LinkedIn pages you can easily tell that they are each fake… CEO and lead developer John D. Martin has only three connections on LinkedIn, despite an alleged seven-year development career.”
The Offering
The project has a fully written whitepaper and an impressive website. It seems like the perfect combination to lure new investors in the scheme. It also has a functioning clone of other NEO wallet services (the code was most probably copied and pasted). It does not allow to create a paper wallet though.
According to the NEOX whitepaper, a fork as is done in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, or the upcoming fork of Bitcoin Cash is not possible in NEO.
“A lot of misunderstanding and incorrect representations surround the question of NEO forks. To put it simply, NEO cannot be forked in the same way as Bitcoin or Ethereum — that is, there is no way to split the chain and create a new coin based on NEO.”
The fact that they have developed a wallet service that can capture NEO private keys is questionable. It is also unclear how NEO holders and the users of NEOX wallet service can access or redeem their coins. The confusion arises from the fact that NEOX is supposed to be an Ethereum token and smart contract. The fork is scheduled to take place on November 10 at about 20:00 GMT. NEOX tokens will be issues in the ratio 1:2 that is, for each NEO you hold, you will receive 2 NEOX tokens.
Our Advice
The developers of the NEOX wallet service are unknown and thus, we advice NEO holders to not enter their private keys onto their services. Also, the tokens, if redeemed, will not be worth the risk it involves sharing your private keys with a non-reputable service provider. It is also argued that if every NEO in existence at the time of the snapshot is to be duplicated and doubled in the new system, then there should be some way that users will be able to access it without affecting their existing holdings.
To declare a project which hasn’t even launched yet a scam does not seem justified. But the danger and risk it poses for NEO holders and investors definitely means that awareness regarding the project must be generated and the matter must not be taken lightly.
