So, I recently participated in my second bounty campaign, one for Dimcoin. For those of you who have read my previous posts, you will know that I was crypto-scammed by trying to purchase dimcoins and dimtokens from a community member in Bitcointalk (it was my own mistake for not using escrow and being a naïve newbie. If you are curious, you can read my post How I was crypto-currency scammed).
Anyway, Dimcoin was an ICO I missed by a few hours when I was first learning about crypto-currencies, and it seemed like a good project, so after never receiving my coins and tokens from the user I purchased from, I jumped at the opportunity of participating on a post ICO bounty campaign and earning some Dimcoin. I also loved that this was a Creative Bounty Campaign.
The terms of the creative bounty were pretty straightforward: “Participants will be paid 1000 – 25000 into their Nano/DEPOTWALLET depending on the creativity and originality of their creation. The more creative, the more DIMCOIN!” The only big no-no was using “team member’s faces in your illustrations”, which I didn’t do. I focused more on using well known cartoon characters as I figured that would make them funnier.
Because I really wanted to earn Dimcoin, I submitted 25 images (you can view them here) and registered all of them individually on their form as indicated (you can check the spreadsheet here (user: AllyCN). I figured the more images, the more I would earn (I also suspected I wouldn’t earn top prize for them because they were images and other people might do gifs, videos, etc. or just in case some would not count because they were seen as too basic, even though I was still within the guidelines). The team ended up picking 5 of my images as their favorites (even though surprisingly some of the ones they picked were not my faves, but it is a matter of personal liking and I am glad they liked them).
You can see the images the team picked as their faves here, and I have included images from the 5 they picked from mine in my imgur Dimcoin Creative album. This is one of the ones they picked:
However, what I did not expect was to only get awarded 5,000 dimcoins for my 25 illustrations. The reply I got from the team was even worse: “The same applies to you, you were paid a collective amount for all the illustration and not for individual images. I hope it is now clear. Don’t hesitate if you have more questions.” (they say the same applies to you because another member also had the same question).
Well Dimcoin team, it is certainly not clear. Yes, you might have mentioned that on the "payout message" (haven't checked that), but nowhere in the terms of the creative bounty did you mention that a collective amount would be granted for the creations (if you were surprised at the number of submissions members did, then you should have put a limit to that early on or set up a deadline).
I assumed that by creation you meant submission (since you had an individual submission form, not a collective one), which is why I submitted my 25 images independently, by filling out the form each time, and not as a collective work. Again, I would understand if not all of them counted for whatever reason, but even if at least 10 – 12 out of the 25 were good enough, I would have expected to be awarded between 1000 – 25000 for each of those creations as the terms read. Now, since you excitedly also mentioned “The more creative, the more DIMCOIN!” I would have thought that is 5 of my creations were picked as your team's favorites, that meant they would have received a higher award, but that didn’t happen. If feels as if I got the lowest award possible for the 5 you picked and that is not how the bounty was advertised. Making this change at the end of the bounty campaign, without notifying the participants beforehand would be like paying a lower number of stakes to Avatar & Signature bounty campaign participants because you felt like it and only letting them know in the payout messages. Members would not accept that, and they would destroy your trust ratings. This is wrong, and reduces your credibility. If you change the terms in something so simple, how can investors be sure you won’t change the terms of your ICO as it better suits you, or even worse, scam them? Where is the security you advertise on your whitepaper?
I hope someone from your team actually replies and fixes this problem. As recommended, I replied again on their creative bounty thread on October 5th, but have yet to get a reply.
Ally
PS. Links to some of my previous articles (I also have some available in Spanish in case you are interested):