Ian Balina, the poster child of the 2017 ICO boom, has added his name to a class action lawsuit against Sparkster, an ICO that he was promoting and that tanked 92% upon listing on IDEX. Talk of a class action lawsuit began in March while the tokens were still locked up, after which nothing was heard, but a recent message from Balina suggests that the case has progressed.
Negative Attention
The ICO was completed in July last year, since when it has attracted all the wrong kind of attention, leaving a trail of disgruntled ICO buyers in its wake with many accusing the platform of being a scam, citing the following reasons, among others:
- CEO Sajjad Daya failing to cash out the $30 million in ETH raised during the sale in time, finally selling it for only $900k
- Investor tokens being locked up way past the suggested date, citing the ‘adverse market condition’
- Cancelling a vote on whether tokens should be released
- Naysayers being banned from the Telegram group
- Accusations of poorly written code
The Telegram group has been put into ‘admin only’ mode since June 15, meaning that investors have no avenue of discussion with admins, which perhaps explains why the underground group has grown, along with the anger. A class action lawsuit is clearly the nuclear option as it would terminate any remaining value left in the tokens for the holders, which is a testament to how they feel about the project and the token’s potential now.
CEO is “100% Focused”
Admins have since posted in the group, including one attempt to enlist the community’s help to “collectively tackle the systematic smear campaign.” Daya himself has also posted, stating that he is “disheartened by the recent events”, a post that came around the time that the token was delisted from the Bilaxy exchange after it was discovered that a minting feature in the smart contract allowed Sparkster tokens to be minted ad infinitum.
Despite these numerous problems, Daya stated that he is “100% focused on solving real problems, for real people in the real world, and creating substantive demand for both our products and our token.” This may prove to be difficult however if a class action lawsuit shuts down the project.
