There is a say that goes; a thief is a thief only when he is caught. With the ICO industry becoming a thriving hive for fraudsters the need to exercise due diligence has become even more important.
What is Exxor?
Exxor is a new distributed accounting technology based on Directed Acyclic Graphs. The technology is aimed at the multi-trillion dollar Internet of Things industry and claims to scale better than Blockchain technology.
Scam alert!
There are too many shady things about the whole project and that is why we wrote this report to alert the ICO community.
A fake Youtube account
The video about was published by an account called Nexus ICO - which should not be confused with the REAL NEXUS Social Media ICO.
Obviously the YouTube account was named after Nexus just to confuse people in this "scam". Scam? - Yes, read on, there is more.
Stealing the name
The project claims to have partnerships with Samsung, a claim that cannot be verified anywhere. The name "EXXOR" seem to have been taken to confuse investors with EXOR.com, an investment firm that Samsung does have interest in.
Scrappy website
The website is lacking in SSL(HTTPS) and not even the login page does have one.
The Samsung Saga
Samsung does have a Blockchain project, but its called NexLedger. There is no proof whatsoever that Samsung does have a partnership deal with EXXOR as claimed.
Is EXXOR a scam?
Yes, we think so. EXXOR has all the elements of a scam including;
- big partnership claims with no proof of it
- a team fictional Google photo created team and no verification of the team
- a badly built website with absolutely not SSL - not even on the ICO page
- copying the names of already existing projects
- no news appearance on Coin Desk
- paid press releases on countless sites
EXXOR in the media
Lots of mainstream and even non-main stream media are in on this trillion dollar scam - oh, but on terms of paid press release.
On all these sites, they put a disclaimer there saying they do not endorse any of the content in the press release nor are they affiliated to the project.
Look at the impressive list of media reports on it:
- HuffingtonPost (by an indepedent author)
- NewBium
- Bitcoin.com (With Disclaimer)
- Coin Telegraph (With Disclaimer)
- Pitch Engine
- Bay Net
- Token Tops
- Cryptocoin Chart
- World Coin Index
- ICO Tracker
- Info War forum (written by an indepedent author in forum)
- Coin Schedule
- Lots and lots of other paid press release site
The team
The core team look like the perfect scam squad - obviously the images were picked randomly from across the internet with vanity LinkedIn accounts created for them.
The advisers have NO Samsung executive or director among them.
The ICO
Like most other scams, the pre-ICO is live the very same day the idea was conceived. To join the ICO, one must login to their website, which has absolutely no SSL(not HTTPS).
We did not bother to register an account on this scammy site. You can see the page for yourself. As for the amount the site claims to have raised so far, it could me nothing more than a fiction to draw in more people to invest.
The Whitepaper
The whitepaper is pretty long, 95 pages of text a only a few pages of illustrations. Basically, the whitepaper is just a report on the technology of the cryptocurrencies, their advantages and disadvantages as well a talk of Internet of Things.
The paper is so cleverly written that by the time you finish reading, you would be hypnotized to forget everything. Read the ridiculous whitepaper yourself.
The company
Oddly, the Exxor though it was necessary to include its company registration information in its whitepaper so as to enforce its credibility.
The company is EXONIC LTD, Company number 10939583, registered in the UK to Kelvin Rodgers with 75% voting power.
However, this still does not mean ANYTHING. Do a simple Google search online for UK company registration and you will see a list of company registration providers.
There are countless proxies services to use to register a business in the UK. Exxor might have fooled the entire world, but do not fall for it.
What to do
Do your own background investigations into the project and publish whatever you find. If you find out that they are a scam, do not forget to shout it loud.
What we are doing!
@BlockRush has contacted Samsung Uk on Facebook about Exxor but we have not yet received any response. We will publish whatever reply we get, stay tuned.
Update:
Samsung has confirmed that they have NO dealings with Exxor!
Second confirmation!
it was reported that bigger parts of their whitepaper are plagiarized from this book. And also that their "signed" partnership with Samsung is only "verbal". Somehow curious, this whole Exxor thing.
The scam on Reddit via Google Ads
This is where it all started for us. While reading a thread about Bitcoin's SegWit on Reddit, we saw this ads and decided to learn more.
Final words
Directed Acyclic Graphs could be a awesome technology that could scale better than Blockchain, however Blockchain encompasses more than capacity or speed. Blockchain technology is about decentralization, autonomy, privacy and trust.
Also, the Exxor team should find a better approach to promote their technology. Hiding behind the big name of Samsung, bribing media houses to promote their scam as well as riding on the multi-trillion dollar IoT industry will not help.
Innovation could be impressive, but implementation could be messy; we said this before.
What do you think?