anatomy of a derailment

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Read this January 2019 press release

and this one from Benzinga that quoted CEO David Brierley

or watch David Brierley's interview with Crypto Zombie

Read this April 2019 article from Cointelegraph

In an interview with Cointelegraph, David Brierley, the CEO of Howdoo, one of the projects affected in the alleged theft, provided two weeks’ correspondence between his company and a representative of CoinBene. According to the correspondence, the March 25 incident saw 18.4 million ($209,000) removed from the CoinBene hot wallet. According to Brierley, upon initial contact with CoinBene, the manager admitted to not knowing  the source of the intrusion — while still telling the public that there was ongoing maintenance. Meanwhile, Brierley says,  "CoinBene still allowed people to trade nonexistent udoo tokens on the platform. Consequently, the price of udoo began to tank. CoinBene was trying to devalue udoo’s price so it could easily cover its losses from the suspected hack."

Read this July 2020 article 

And yes there was a live product - the Hyprr app

Read this October 2019 announcement

If you elected to become a seed node then the smart contract into which you staked your UDOO had a queue (array) system meaning that any later change had to update every node in that queue with a separate transaction on the Ethereum network for each. To remove one node and withdraw your UDOO from the contract meant paying the gas fee for hundreds of Ethereum transactions to move every other node holder behind you up one place in the queue. 

The future utility of the UDOO became questionable after Hyprr was announced during the DeFi boom in 2020 and when Howdoo was wound up during the NFT boom in 2021. But that timing was such that Ethereum gas fees for withdrawal had become so high that it made little or no economic sense to exit from your seed node contract.

The UDOO token reached its all-time high valuation of $0.126607 on September 29, 2019. This means any investor who held on to 125,000 tokens and locked them into the smart contract to purchase a network node in 2021 had in effect committed an investment of $15,825 to the future potential of the Howdoo network. 

At end October 2022, if one includes the 12% annualized accrual of earnings in UDOO from the smart contract, a node owner today will typically own around 151,550 locked up tokens with a total market value of around $31.  

Read this March 2022 article

John Shed, [Nov 7, 2022 at 13:25]

Dear Community.

As I have been stating over the past few months, official statements will be made as and when appropriate.

We are all aware the macro environment has radically changed over the past 6 to 9 months, and that it seems to be escalating.

With this in mind, I’d like to inform the community that unless we find a funding solution within 45 days, I will have no choice other than to take Hyprr offline, in order to save the hosting costs. The hope is that if we do secure funding, we will improve the platform before bringing back online. For the avoidance of doubt, taking Hyprr offline, will not destroy or remove any content or NFT’s that are held on the platform.

I would now like to confirm a few material points:

•  Node economic model.

The historical model doesn’t function at it should, and thus a new model is required. If we are successful in securing the platform, we intent to introduce a new economic model that is both rewarding and sustainable. This new model will be based upon node holders receiving gas fees for validating the network. More details will be made available and subject to the project moving forward.

•  While we appreciate that certain node holders are reluctant to withdraw due to gas fees, we strongly recommend that you do, as we cannot guarantee that the user will be able to withdraw in the future. This is not a threat, just a precautionary statement, as it’s our intention with extra funding, to work with all node holders moving forward. However, we cannot take any responsibility if a node holder elects to keep their tokens within the node smart contract. 

•  We have started the process of de-listing from Kucoin. More details will follow. 

Once again, I’d like to express my appreciation to our community’s efforts over the years, and I hope that we can find a solution before it’s too late.

My email is db@hyprr.com, so please feel free to message me if you have any suggestions or solutions.

Regards,

David Brierley.

Hyprr Announcement - 17th Jan 2023.

We are very pleased to announce that a way forward for Hyprr has been found, and we have new investors and team to take the business forward.

A deal in principle has been signed, so the process can start today. A new holding company is being established,  and there will be an investment board and a new Hyprr management team. The investment board has appointed Darren Baggett (https://www.linkedin.com/in/darren-baggett-533b9262/?originalSubdomain=uk) to the Hyprr management team as COO, and he will be responsible for overseeing the due diligence and providing financial oversight and governance going forward.

The deal sees David Brierley completely exit the business and it is his intention to establish a web3 development studio. The new Hyprr business intends to contract with this studio in  the short term to support the development of the Hyprr web, mobile apps and backend blockchain. This is not an exclusive arrangement but it allows the new Hyprr to have access to existing development resources and will provide continuity during the transition. However, in this capacity, we want to clarify that David will have no further input or control over the running of Hyprr. It is our intention to transition our own internal development  team; however, the timing of this has not been finalized.

We are also announcing that Jason Sibley, has agreed to join the team as  Interim CEO, with the option on both sides to make permanent after three months. Jason will oversea the product  and customer acquisition strategy, as well as lead the build out of the  much needed advertising engine, that will help us move this business into revenue.

One of Darren and Jasons first tasks is to recruit the new management team, and we will update the community in due course. 

As we enter into the next phase of due diligence, we would like to thank David for allowing us to start work on the new Hyprr in earnest, and the new team will be taking over socials, email and engagement with immediate effect.

It  is our priority to come back to the community early next week with a very clear short term plan, detailing the stages and what you all can expect to happen. In the very short term we  are visible in social and able to be contacted here —> Jason@hyprr.com or Darren@hyprr.com 

We all believe in the original vision of bringing to market a smarter, fairer and more rewarding social platform for the creator economy, and are excited to be on this journey with you.  

We hope you all stick with us.

https://twitter.com/HypeXByHyprr/status/1761052474092167247

Morning everyone. So quick progress and timeline update.

- Acquisition has completed. New tech will add significant value to Hyprr.

- Hyprr brand will stay and both tokens renamed to HypeX but will require a new smart contract and tokenomics (possible new chain).

- Updated whitepaper, tokenmonics and roadmap is now in progress, expected release mid Aug as a part of the launch (re) marketing push. 

- there are 6 exchanges holding tokens, so they are being consulted to facilitate the swap. Some may not be part of the launch, this is TBC (all terms depending).

- team committed to a significant marketing launch budget, but exchanges terms will impact this. 

- new MD and expanded dev team ready

- new blockchain advertising partner almost secured (who will plug in and power the ad engine), integration work required  will determine go ahead. 

- Council are discussing the distribution of 90m hypex community tokens, this will happen before relaunch. 

- When launch? There are a number of factors here, and market is a key one. The team realise we have one chance at breaking into the space, so this is open. But is likely to be in either Sept or Oct.

There has been some suggestion that the team or individuals are selling tokens, and this isn’t the case. We are not  publicly releasing news and doing nothing to pump sales. Public announcement will happen once all the above is in place. 

Lastly  there is a small advocates group where we discuss things in more detail  and have occasional meet ups. The idea  being we have a small team who help with the community drum beat for  the relaunch - if you feel like you want to be part of it and help, DM me.