Here is Part 2 of my investigation on CodeValley and Emergent Coding.
Part1 + Addendum was an analysis of how Emergent Coding works
Part2 is an analysis of how CodeValley company could possibly work.
Part3 will be an analysis of potential attack scenarios, their potential seriousness and how to mitigate them if they actually happen.
TL;DR
- There is a long list of slightly suspicious, moderately suspicious and highly suspicious / almost condemning actions taken by CodeValley
- Based on these actions, I propose 7 models that could logically explain how CodeValley came to be / how it works from the inside.
- I estimate the probability of CodeValley being a dishonest company with ulterior motives to be 97% (I could still be wrong). Depending on what kind of dishonest company it is, these motives can be focused/targeted on Bitcoin Cash or not.
I hereby present all the evidence concerning CodeValley company collected by me during the course of my investigation.
EVIDENCE: Almost neutral behaviors (Almost acceptable, not condemning, not suspicious or only slightly suspicious, like a relatively "normal" company would do):
A1) CodeValley is not interested in getting any funding, apparently. The CEO himself has stated that they are interested only in developers [Archive]. This is not actually bad itself, it may be a strategy to get developers interested in the project first so they popularize it and get the funds later after the tech is popular already
A2) They are trying to get as many [paying] people as possible involved, without actually telling these people what they will be involved in. This is moderately dishonest.
A3) CodeValley is "Anchor Tenant" at Australia's Bitcoin Tech park. Whatever that means - because there is no documentation or information of how this is supposed to work. Will CodeValley have decision power of whether other companies can or cannot occupy the tech park and on what kind of conditions & terms? If they do have some kind of decision power or veto power, they could easily use this to influence or even force other companies into their highly secretive and proprietary technology.
A4) The company is extremely secretive about anything that would explain how the product is supposed to work. It takes solid PR-beating with a club until bleeding starts for the company to share any details whatsoever about the product they have.
A5) Instead of just explaining how the product works and allowing developers to become amazed with the beauty of the mechanism that makes it go, they chose to keep everything opaque and hide as much as they can about the product. It's like they are convinced that if they reveal too much, everyone will run away. It does not necessarily yet signify a bad actor, it could be just a bad business decision
EVIDENCE: Somewhat suspicious behaviors
B1) Despite being 11 years in the field,
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CodeValley's product is not available as an actual software at all
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They cannot disclose list of their patents, even though their Intellectual Property is being obviously well-protected
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Almost nobody known in the world uses any of their product, they have no big "success stories"
B2) The company does not even want to reveal its business plan. Maybe it doesn't have any? But how did it get $50M in funding without a business plan? So the logical conclusions are, they
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Either do have a business plan and are ashamed to show it for some reason OR
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They don't have any business plan, in which case other factors are at play - most probably insidious or dodgy factors
B3) Noticed all the posts of CodeValley CEO have an automatic +3 upvotes in most topics their CEO answers. This is a little suspicious, but to be fair - in today's social media-soaked times it may be normal for any company to engage in honest and a little less honest PR damage control.
B4) The whitepaper and the presentation of their product is deliberately extremely vague and contains no concrete information. Deliberately, because it takes serious mental gymnastics to write so much text without actually giving any concrete information about a product which has actually a pretty simple premise of binary software fragment market. And such mental gymnastics can only be done on purpose. This reeks of dishonesty.
B5) Since I started the investigation, CodeValley CEO and a shill which appeared later tried to use multiple different psychological attacks on me. Specifically:
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"Symphatizing" with my (supposed) hardships that had led me to this investigation, my hard childhood or whatever, and showing understanding (attacks details: make yourself closer to the person by symphatizing, thus provoking softer, less agressive responses, pretending to care and positioning yourself as a friend)
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Praising me despite knowing actually nothing about me (attack details: make the attacked feel good about himself, pretend to be a friend, which changes that state of mind of attacked to more relaxed and makes him become susceptible to more manipulation tactics)
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Inviting me to a "workshop" in Austalia, paying for hotels, plane and expenses, despite not knowing me (attacks: 1. Bribe using free services, 2. use more psycho-manipulation tricks in person, the way they are more effective)
B6) Failure to answer what is the source of funds for my supposed travel to australia, how will it be booked in their spending financial sheets, how it will be "raised". Just dropping the topic, like it never existed.
B7) CodeValley's funding sources are extremely shady. The big fund that brings unknown percentage of money to the table [Archive] is completely opaque and CodeValley does not want to share any information whatsoever about it
EVIDENCE: Highly suspicious or nearly condemning behaviors
C1) Despite being 11 years in the field, CodeValley does not give internal(binary & download) access to anybody, even their current business partners [Archive]
C2) After weeks of the investigation, once people steering CodeValley saw that I cannot be easily swayed, bought or discarded as an obvious troll, their shills start begging me to "not connect the dots" in part3 and consult them first before writing anything [Archive]. And all this while still claiming not being an obvious shill. Also another manipulation tactics by praise. This is pure gold (or rather: pure malice).
C3) Emergent Coding shills are bothering me in a similar way to CSW Shills - meaningly they spam PMs/comments in my direction specifically after telling them to leave me alone and after I add them to RES ignore list. Normal reddit users and even Core Shills never do that, so I conclude that they must have similar mindset to CSW/Calvin/nChain Shills, which will, most probably, mean being dishonest with their intentions.
C4) The company does not even talk about WHY it doesn't want to reveal its business plan. It would be almost okay if they said "we cannot reveal the plan due to contract with company XYZ or the Government". But they don't. This is extremely suspiciuous and signifies something nefarious.
C5) The company does not even talk about WHY it doesn't want to reveal its patents. One explanation like "listen, we cannot do it, we have NDAs or contracts with other entities" would be something. But no. Instead, once questions about patents start, they go completely silent - except only their shills immediately show up [Archive] and start explaining "possible reasons why". Also highly nefarious behavior typical for people ulterior agendas.
I will also now present theories of possible models that could explain occurence of company similar to CodeValley in nature:
MODEL 1. A normal honest company: Having incompetent owners, victims to the [sunk cost fallacy], developing product that will never work and pointlessly hoping for their dreams to come true while also trying to pull as many people in as possible, for some psychologically peculiar reason (something akin to group suicide).
MODEL 2. A normal dishonest company: A normal company with dishonest and manipulative owners that understand perfectly that the product they are selling is pointless and will never work as advertised. But they try to pull as many developers as they can into their system, make them sign contracts and NDAs, so money can be milked from them in a hopefully steady manner. There is a danger this type of company can morph into Placeholder company(3), pure evil-type company(6) or patent troll company(5).
MODEL 3. A "Placeholder" company: A shell company positioned in some specific place by a very wealthy and influential person or organization. It is a sleeper company, that remains dormant for a long time until it accomplishes enough and gains enough foothold in the specific industry that the actual owner can use it to influence the industry and earn huge money or achieve certain goals in politics. Example: nChain.
MODEL 4. A "Phantom Placeholder" company: The same as placeholder company, except it (owner, ceo and employees) does not actually know that it is a placeholder company. The biggest investor (the actual owner) has "other plans" for the company, which he will reveal in appropriate time and make the company do whatever he wants.
MODEL 5. Dirty money company: Company created for laundering dirty money (from prostitution, drugs, illegal gambling, human trafficking or illegal arms). Mostly harmless, will just produce junk and pretend it is doing something until the money run out. Or if they won't run out, it will produce junk indefinitely.
MODEL 6. A patent troll: A company that deliberately created or used very complex technology in order to pull as many companies as they can into their system in order to sue them and then milk them continuously through trials and lawyers.
MODEL 7. A "pure-evil" company. Company that is deliberately working in order to destroy or cripple a technology or an industry for political gain while pretending to be saints and pretending to make progress in the field/industry. Examples: Blockstream, GAZPROM(russian company).
I estimate the probability of CodeValley being one of models 2-7 at 97% and being a model 1 at 3%.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/df88ap/emergent_codingcodevalley_investigation_part2_how/
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