BlockDAG is a shit project

Introduction

Introduction of introduction

Let’s start by defining what we’re going to talk about. First, there was the blockchain. This is a continuous sequential chain of blocks (linked list) built according to certain rules, which contain some information. This term does not need further explanation. Everyone is familiar with its application in various fields. First of all, the blockchain is the basis of Bitcoin. In 2015, a paper was published by Yoad Lewenberg, Yonatan Sompolinsky, and Aviv Zohar [1]. In this paper, the authors propose an alternative structure to the chain that allows for operation at much higher rates. Their structure consists of a directed acyclic graph of blocks (BlockDAG now). Later, Yonatan Sompolinsky continues research in the field of BlockDAG. The PHANTOM protocol, the GHOSTDAG protocol appear. Amazing technology that became the basis of the Kaspa cryptocurrency. The network was launched in 2022. Since then, she has proven herself well.

Immediately after reading Yonatan Sompolinsky’s scientific papers, I fell in love with the Kaspa project. I’m actively following its development. This is Bitcoin, if it were created in modern times with all the existing scientific and technical groundwork. But that’s not what I’m talking about now. During the time that I’ve been following the project and its development, I’ve seen a lot. The kaspad core was completely rewritten in Rust. KRC-20 technology was implemented. Against the backdrop of Kaspa’s success, various forks were born that did not bring anything remarkable to the BlockDAG technology. In 2023, I accidentally came across what I will talk about now.

Impostors with the same name

Kaspa adheres to the philosophy of maximum openness and decentralization. The project is completely in the hands of the community. Even at the time of launch, there was no presale or premine. In modern times, this is already something unusual for many representatives of the crypto community. In general, I am a supporter of this approach. But there is another view on the organization of the project, more centralized, as, for example, the projects Ethereum, Solana, Ton and many others are organized. In such a situation, it is logical for a new project to appear with BlockDAG as a basis and with a more centralized organization. And here it is. Guess the name? The founders did not bother. The project was called BlockDAG. Quite bold, but maybe there are reasons for this?

Here is a presale of tokens, and a preliminary sale of mining equipment. What is there mining equipment, you can even mine on your phone. Everyone is running to deposit their money. But what in fact? In fact, it looks dubious. It’s impossible to say that this is a completely scam project, these guys are doing something. But this project cannot be taken seriously. It is not revolutionary or fundamental. I could pass by, there have already been many such no-name projects. However, today I came across a paper that said that BlockDAG raised more than 100 MILLION BUCKS on the presale. And the most important thing is that almost no one talks about the fact that the founders sell people stones at the price of gold. But let’s take everything in order.

Whitepapers

What do people usually start with when getting acquainted with a project? Of course, with Whitepaper. Let’s do just that, go to their official website, and find Whitepaper. It turns out that the second version has already been released.

Let’s start with the first version [2]. In general, there is not much written there, but not little either. If we talk about the facts, then Whitepaper is just water. A laudatory advertising brochure. Let’s consider it in order. First, a little history is written. I would have no complaints, but where are the links? You called yourself BlockDAG, but you don’t even refer to the original source, seriously? Then more: “Here, the BlockDAG project emerges not merely as another contender but as a visionary that sees beyond the present”. They also call themselves visionaries… In fact, there are no innovations in the technology. Then they talk about how cool their technology is, how breakthrough it is, and so on. In one place, Kaspa is still mentioned: “with BDAG mining consuming very low power compared to those of KAS…”. Of course, they don’t say how they achieve this, you just have to believe. And so on: words, words, a promise of a technological breakthrough, but zero details on how it will work, just believe. Then tokenomics, well, okay, accepted as a fact, and let’s move on. Then they offer to buy mining equipment, there is no network, but you pay cash for the hardware. Well, and a lot more words have been said about how open, open source and so on they are. Is it true? More on that later.

Let’s take a look at what the “BlockDAG Network DAGpaper V2” [3] says. Let’s start with the title page (Fig. 1). It’s phenomenal.

Fig. 1. Whitepaper title page

The founders lie from the first page. Okay, let’s move on. Then some formulas and drawings appear. Let’s look at some examples.

Fig. 2. Screenshot 1 from [3]

Fig. 3. Screenshot 2 from [3]

Fig. 4. Screenshot 3 from [3]

Fig. 5. Screenshot 4 from [3]

It looks very familiar somehow. That’s why we’ve already seen these same drawings and text 1:1 in Jonathan Sampolinski’s 2021 paper [4] (GHOSTDAG Whitepaper) and in the 2018 paper [5] (which essentially contains the same thing). The content of the “BlockDAG Network DAGpaper V2” was copied without any changes from the paper [5]. You can see this for yourself by looking at the original sources. Here are some examples. Fig. 2 corresponds to Fig. 6, Fig. 3 corresponds to Fig. 7, Fig. 4 corresponds to Fig. 8, Fig. 5 corresponds to Fig. 9.

Fig. 6. Screenshot 1 from [5]

Fig. 7. Screenshot 2 from [5]

Fig. 8. Screenshot 3 from [5]

Fig. 9. Screenshot 4 from [5]

They simply took screenshots of the formula from Fig. 9 and transferred it to their Whitepaper (see. Fig. 5). The entire Whitepaper consists entirely of formulas, text and figures taken from the work [5]. Separately, note that the formulas have been rewritten with loss of meaning: brackets are missing, signs are not displayed correctly (see. signs set membership, set-theoretic intersection, etc.), there is no tabulation in the algorithms (see Fig. 10 and Fig. 11).

Fig. 10. Screenshot 1 from [3]

Fig. 11. Screenshot 2 from [3]

As a result, we have that the BlockDAG project is nothing new at all, the authors simply copied everything from [5]. They copied it crookedly. They couldn’t format the Whitepaper properly, no problem. Okay, let’s talk about the essence and look at the program code. What’s in the source code? If there is any at all? Is there?

Open community and open source

The Whitepaper and the website indicate that the project adheres to an open policy. Perhaps there is open source code? Spoiler: there is none. Let me remind you that the project has already raised 100 million bucks, but no one has seen a single line of code. There is not even a link to GitHub. But on the main page there is a proud entry: “Powered by GitHub”, Fig. 12.

Fig. 12. Screenshot from official website

Then the question arises again, what are we paying for? For a beautiful website? I think that’s questionable…

Site Contents

Let’s move on. The main site has a blog, Wiki, Dev Releases. There is a lot of text to analyze, you can look at various entries and analyze them for AI generation. I will just show a few results that I got. Fig. 13 and Fig. 15 show the results of checking for AI using the QuillBot service. Fig. 14 and Fig. 16 show the results of checking for AI using the Grammarly service.

Fig. 13. QuillBot AI check result

Fig. 14. Grammarly AI check result

Fig. 15. QuillBot AI check result

Fig. 16. Grammarly AI check result

Is this good or bad? Decide for yourself.

Maybe there is something after all?

Yes, they do have something. They have money for advertising. These guys pour a lot of money into advertising. There are advertising contracts with athletes and the like, whether it is good or bad is up to you to decide. I will say for myself that casinos and Ponzi schemes are usually advertised by people from the media :) There are also many articles on various news sites. However, most of them are also generated by AI, you can check this by using the appropriate services, as shown in the previous paragraph. All the articles are laudatory. It is difficult to say whether they are paid or not. I do not see any factors for which this project can be praised, except for a beautiful site and advertising contracts.

What about team?

The site lists several people: Antony Turner, Jeremy Harkness, Dr. Prof. Youssef Khaoulaj, Steven Clarke, Dr. Maurice Herlihy.

Antony Turner, Jeremy Harkness, Steve Clarke

I tried to search for these people on stock services, but I couldn’t find any photos. The photos also pass the AI test. Apparently, these are real people. However, I didn’t find any significant high-profile achievements related to cryptocurrency or scientific and technical projects that were written about in the media. I understand that this is not an indicator, but it’s also worth keeping in mind. Try searching for information about them in Google for the period before the appearance of BlockDAG (before 2023), there are no mentions of them. Each of them has a LinkedIn. The pages look quite alive.

Dr. Prof. Youssef Khaoulaj

Special mention should be made of Dr. Prof. Youssef Khaoulaj. If you try to find this professor in abstract databases, you will not find anything. Is this really a doctor? Is this really a professor? Where are his scientific papers or other results???

Fig. 17. Author search result in Google Scholar

Fig. 18. Author search result inК ResearchGate

Fig. 19. Author search result in Scopus

There is also no additional information on the Internet in the media until 2023.

Dr. Maurice Herlihy

Dr. Maurice Herlihy is the only person who is undoubtedly a truly significant person. He has a reputation in the scientific community. It is difficult to say what function he performs in the project, on the website he is listed as a consultant. He has been working at BlockDAG for a short time, judging by LinkedIn, for 4 months.

Others

Also, according to LinkedIn, the company employs about 11-50 people. Apparently, some technological work is going on in the project and it is not just a dummy with a beautiful website. In September, a test network was even launched.

Testnet

If all of the above does not convince you, then I left the cherry on the cake for dessert. I will make a warning. It is quite possible that after some time, what will be written here will be removed or changed from the site blockdag.network. Therefore, I appeal to those who read this long after publication. Just use the Wayback Machine Internet Archive.

So, the testnet is up and running. Let’s explore this Acyclic Graph. And what do we find? It turns out that the testnet is not an Acyclic Graph, but a regular Blockchain. See for yourself, here the entire chain. Another batch of lies from the founders.

How about this? Meet BlockDAG IDE.

Fig. 20. Nice skin for Remix IDE

I think there is no need for comments here. Were you expecting to see KRC-20 or maybe B~~lockDAG~~RC-20? No, we will issue ERC-20 or ERC-721 tokens.

Fig. 21. Example code written in Solidity, a standard template for a token in the Ethereum network 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣

There’s more. Guess what will happen if you click “Listen on all transactions” Check Box (in Fig. 22)?

Fig. 22. Mystery Check Box

We will see transactions that take place on the Ethereum network.

Fig. 23. Information about one of the transactions seen

Fig. 23 shows the details of one of the transactions shown. You can check it yourself, it’s the Ethereum network. Here is the hash of this transaction: 0xdcecf43f09f77b4db3093b29d45f7c5b679080ae61457cc92ca468a613390ac7.

Conclusion

What’s the bottom line? I see three possible scenarios. In all three scenarios, they are trying to leave you without money.

In the first scenario, the team launches a blockchain (instead of the promised BlockDAG) from the Ethereum source code. It seems most likely to me. This is exactly what has already been partially implemented using the test network as an example. Are you ready to pay for a crooked clone of Ethereum? I don’t think so.
In the second scenario, the team does launch the BlockDAG network from the Kaspa source code. Apparently, this seems more complicated. Why didn’t they do it right away? I don’t know what’s wrong with them. Are you ready to pay for a crooked clone of Kaspa? I don’t think so.
In the third scenario, the team simply doesn’t launch anything and part ways with your money.

In all three scenarios, this network will have no prospects. It’s better to save your money and spend it on something more useful.

Bibliography

[1] Lewenberg Y., Sompolinsky Y., Zohar A. Inclusive Block Chain Protocols // Financial Cryptography and Data Security: 19th International Conference, FC 2015, San Juan, Puerto Rico, January 26-30, 2015. P. 528–547.

[2] BlockDAG. The DAGpaper. URL: https://blockdag.network/blockdag-whitepaper.pdf (Date of access is Oct 29, 2024).

[3] BlockDAG. BlockDAG Network DAGpaper V2. URL: https://blockdag.network/blockdag-technical-whitepaper.pdf (Date of access is Oct 29, 2024).

[4] Sompolinsky Y., Wyborski S., Zohar A. PHANTOM GHOSTDAG: A Scalable Generalization of Nakamoto Consensus, 2021. 14 p.

[5] Sompolinsky Y., Zohar A. PHANTOM: A Scalable BlockDAG protocol, 2018. 26 p.