Pilot guests arrive, the unlock process starts, the war on fraud is won.
It has been a busy two weeks for the team at Tratok. From welcoming our pilot guests from the United Kingdom to cleansing the community, it has been busy. The pilot tests were a massive success, the guests enjoying themselves, and teething problems being practically non-existent. With the feedback from the stakeholders (client and service side), we have refined some of our processes to smoothen the process and soon we look forward to welcoming all of you very soon first in Dubai and then the rest of the world as we expand.
At the same time, the swap deadline has passed as of October 5th, and the wallet unlock has started. We understand there are some frustrations with this, as it has taken a few days longer than expected. It is at this point we would like to share a note from the desk of our Custodian, Mohammed Altajir.
“Tratok has always known that upon providing a product, partnerships and delivering a real-world use case that it would stand head and shoulders above much of the industry. It is with this spirit and ambition that the founders of Tratok ploughed vast sums of their money into the project to develop it and bring the world closer together. While others took from the public, we have always given. Tratok remains a gift the world and has benefited many. What other privately funded and freely given project has allowed two people from a council estate to realize a dream holiday and spend a week of five-star splendour in Dubai? We have already changed the world for some and made it better, and we aspire to do so for countless others.
Naturally, there is an unspoken problem in the blockchain space of fraud. Those who simply want to take and take without end to their greed. It is not surprising that when they saw a token soar in value, as its real-world use was proven, that these opportunist vultures sought to cheat the system. Much to their ruin, they realized they couldn’t succeed and so they took a more destructive route, seeking to slander, sabotage and try to ruin things for others. In short, if they couldn’t reap the benefits, they would make sure that nobody else would. I really feel sorry for those who miss out on something due to their lack of integrity and try to ruin it for others in rage and desperation. If they used their talents productively, they could be a great asset to any endeavour that they are involved in. It really is a shame and a waste of precious talent, and I hope reading this inspires at least one of them to change their ways.
It goes without saying that the team had to take extreme measures to protect the community from the bad fruit, and some of these measures have been unpopular, but are necessary. Personally, I understand the frustration of these fraudsters and made them so angry. Quite frankly, they never encountered such a thorough anti-fraud screen before and hence didn’t know how to cope when exposed.
If anyone reading this believes that the team enjoyed spending over 520 hours of labour fighting fraud and countless hundred hours dealing with the nuisance, they are greatly mistaken. The team is rational, and have better things to do with our time than fighting off gangs of criminals. We would have rather spent the time and company funds moving forward and continuing to be ahead of schedule, as is in our interest. Now that these elements are forever removed from the community, I wish to provide some facts and you can see for yourself that our measures were appropriate. While the battle on fraud is over and has been won, I am simply showing this to everyone so they can appreciate the effort the team went to, the sacrifices made and quite frankly the extent that this misguided element went to.
What they did:
- Created a community specifically with the intention of defrauding Tratok.
- Started scamming members of the public with old tokens following the swap.
- Set up fake chats on social media, masquerading as official Tratok channels.
- Spammed our partners.
- Slandered members of the team in various chats, mocking terms such as religion and mental illness.
- Attempted to DDOS Tratok’s web properties several times.
- Spammed and harassed employees on social media, falsely accusing them of stealing funds.
- Created private groups to coordinate spam bot attacks and tarnish Tratok
Thankfully, in this world, the truth has a habit of prevailing when good people stand by and do the right thing, and this group despite the nuisances caused, utterly failed. It came apart so badly that the main culprit even tried to cut a deal and share screenshots of their activities in the hope for a reward. She tried to sell you all out, and cheaply at that. For less than the equivalent of $500 USD. We do not need to mention names, we know that everyone who has watched developments over the last week is clear on what happened.
We responded to this by protecting the community and kept our word:
- When the swap was complete, we started the wallet unlock process for legitimate members. We know we were later than anticipated, but we spent too much time countering the unpleasantness.
- As promised we delivered the confiscated tokens of the fraudsters to the genuine accounts.
- Rather than take the simple route so many have taken and ban an entire country, we spent great time, money and effort in looking at everything on a case by case basis. Believe me, this is hard when you have 3000 people messaging you all playing victim and using outlandish excuses and falsehoods. We are human and sometimes tempers flare sometimes, but the team did consider EVERY case. We did this because we care, and the fact that we undertook this mission for the community and justice should show you that we do value every single legitimate Tratokian.
We protected the community, got rid of the undesirable elements and set a new standard in integrity. I hope that everyone now appreciates this. We never had a problem with rewarding airdroppers, our actions have proven this. Our problem and war were always with the scammers. I would like to finish by thanking everyone for their support and patience during this difficult time, and I am just glad that with this being the final promotional campaign, that we will never have to go through such a troublesome waste of resources again.
Best Wishes to all you,
Mohammed Altajir
Tratok Custodian
Now back to the project and what you can look forward to next. There will be a full and aggressive rollout of all our partner properties in the UAE. We expect to see many of you booking them in the very near future. Following this, we will begin expanding towards India and the Eurozone as the end of 2019 approaches. During this time, we will welcome members to list their own properties on Tratok similar to the Airbnb model, but powered by the Tratok ecosystem. It’s a convenient way for everyone to help make the world smaller and bring people closer together.
People keep asking us when deposits open. As of today, this is the situation: We have asked our partners to do this and they all have agreed to do so immediately. The exception is Hotbit who require us to address some issues with them, which involved some of their deposit contracts being locked during the first system shutdown. Our team is working with Yvonne to fix this ASAP.
As a means to ensure the widespread adoption of Tratok among blockchain enthusiasts, a Top 5 exchange will be announcing the listing of Tratok very shortly. This will be a huge step in widespread adoption as this exchange not only has legitimate unadulterated volume but at the same time has excellent customer service, great reviews and a great reputation. Given the large user base of the exchange, it will also expose the real-world use case of Tratok and its differential value proposition to genuine supporters of blockchain technology, which in turn should help increase the user base of Tratok significantly.
Finally, the team wishes to impress on the community the fact that the worst is now behind us. The storm has been weathered and the ship remains in good condition. The future of Tratok involves now racing forward and building the ecosystem and increasing adoption. As early adopters, you have an advantage and quite frankly a stake in the project and its success. With wallets unlocked, the true supporters from the plastic ones will emerge, as wallets can not be locked once unlocked. So everyone please feel free to speak their minds and give constructive criticism, it only makes us better. I would also like to remind you all about what happened on October 2018, which the first airdrop was concluded and many dropped their Tratok for one gwei (it is currently 2500 Gwei or 250,000% higher). Tratok will continue to grow from here, and you can help be a part of that growth and help support Tratok become a global brand and reap the rewards. Alternatively, you can cash out something that you got for free right now, for amounts that are quite tiny. Tratok cannot boast a similar pizza story to Bitcoin, however, we can tell you there will never be another promotion program and give you a similar story. Mike and Darrell paid 9,300 TRAT a night for a five-star prestige hotel, breakfast included in the heart of Dubai. 1 year ago on this very day, “Gerald” sold 1,000,000 Trat for 14 cents. Try not to repeat the same mistake.
Here is to the success of the Tratok Project and all those involved,
Tratok Ltd Management