Ethereum, OmiseGo, and Cardano Creators are Boycotting Consensus 2018 After Controversy

According to Bloomberg, the creators of Ethereum, Cardano, and OmiseGo, some of the biggest public blockchain protocols and cryptocurrencies, are boycotting the largest cryptocurrency conference, Consensus, after a controversial report about OmiseGo’s surge in price was published on April 26.

OmiseGo Controversy

Consensus 2018 is the leading cryptocurrency conference, hosted by cryptocurrency media outlet CoinDesk. The event, which is often hosted in the second quarter of every year, attracts many of the most influential projects, developers, investors, and public figures in both the financial sector and cryptocurrency industry.

However, Ethereum creators Vitalik Buterin and Charles Hoskinson, the OmiseGo team, and the Cosmos team have announced that they will not attend this year’s Consensus 2018 event after CoinDesk’s reporting about the rise in the value of OMG, which included a section about a fake OmiseGo giveaway.

On April 26, CoinDesk reported that the price of OmiseGo had surged by more than 30 percent after the listing by Bithumb, South Korea’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange by daily trading volume. In the article, a CoinDesk author mistakenly linked to a scam OmiseGo giveaway that seized the private keys of users by luring OmiseGo and Ethereum users with a false proposition, such as that sending “0.3 OMG will result in 3 OMG.”

Almost immediately after the technical analysis report was released, the OmiseGo team took to social media:

Please R/T@coindesk article links to a scam website impersonating the #OmiseGO blog. Real blog is: blog DOT omisego DOT network

Please protect your readers and our communities by taking down your article immediately @coindesk. Thank you.

Please R/T #Ethereumspirit https://t.co/sYOYtH6g72

— OmiseGO (@omise_go) April 26, 2018

In the aftermath of the response of the OmiseGo team, Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin released a statement of his own and expressed his concerns about quality in cryptocurrency journalism. Buterin emphasized that he would boycott the Consensus 2018 event and encouraged the rest of the community to do the same.

I am boycotting @coindesk's Consensus 2018 conference this year, and strongly encourage others to do the same. Here is my reasoning why.

1. Coindesk is recklessly complicit in enabling giveaway scams. See their latest article on OMG, which *directly links* to a giveaway scam. pic.twitter.com/WDr9uZ8XOw

— Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) April 26, 2018

And this is *after* I publicly warned media to be very careful about such things. https://t.co/AxGyapFDAS

— Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) April 26, 2018

2. Their coverage of EIP 999 was terrible. They published a highly sensationalist article claiming the chain would split, when it was very clear that EIP 999 was *very far* from acceptance.

This is why pundits need to be replaced by prediction markets, ASAP. pic.twitter.com/6A7OWlx0nR

— Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) April 26, 2018

Seriously, is speed really that much more important to you than accuracy?

— Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) April 26, 2018

3. Their reporting policies are designed to trap you with gotchas. Did you know that if you send them a reply, and you explicitly say that some part is off the record, that's explicitly on the record unless you go through a request/approve dance first? pic.twitter.com/8in6ZYSPbR

— Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) April 26, 2018

Following Buterin’s statements, the OmiseGo team, Cosmos team, and Ethereum and Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson publicly stated that they would join Buterin in not attending the event.

“We have decided to join Vitalik Buterin in not attending Consensus2018. We can’t in good conscience support a publication that puts its readers at risk through careless reporting and reacts with hostility rather than humility when the error is brought to its attention. As a community, we will make mistakes as we endeavor to build something that is bigger and better and less fallible than our small selves. One of the most important things we must do if we are to succeed together is to own up to our mistakes and learn from them,” said the OmiseGo team.

Hoskinson, who oversees the development of $7.5 billion blockchain protocol Cardano and $2 billion cryptocurrency Ethereum Classic, also added:

Welcome to the boycott. I'm also not attending.

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) April 26, 2018

Response From the CoinDesk Team

CoinDesk was able to take down the article within hours after publishing it and fix the errors in the report while disclosing that the author had made a mistake. The Verge journalist Adrianne Jeffries stated that although CoinDesk could have been more cautious in covering the cryptocurrency market on that specific occasion, CoinDesk has demonstrated good journalistic practices:

i think coindesk could be more discerning abt covering token madness but 2 complaints in here – that responses have to come in by the deadline and that everything is on the record unless the writer explicitly agrees it is off the record – are standard, good journalistic practice https://t.co/ToaZhzfRol

— Adrianne Jeffries (@adrjeffries) April 26, 2018

Overall, the concerns of Buterin, OmiseGo, and Hoskinson in regards to investor protection and preventing fake giveaway scams from affecting investors within the cryptocurrency market are well justified, and the three communities are pursuing an approach that they consider appropriate to respond to the recent OmiseGo reporting controversy.

But several experts and researchers in the cryptocurrency space, including CoinDesk founding team member Ryan Selkis, offered a soft criticism of Buterin’s uncharacteristic condemnation of CoinDesk, which the creator of Ethereum hasn’t been keen on doing over the past two years, as he admitted in a statement:

Vitalik was wrong in his critique of the editorial team, showed an atypical lack of awareness about the state of content/media, and came across as petty. For someone I’ve admired for precocious maturity, humility, and patience, the spat was surprising.