ShadowCash is Dead. Long Live Particl. (or NOT?)
"As of April 28 SDC will cease to exist and will not be supported."
by Jabba-Q, the Satoshi Watch's Coins Prophet
WOW, "The Core of Privacy" was so fucking important to them that they killed it, without any prior hint of what their "re-branding" would entail.
"Anonymity is the name of the game for ShadowCash (SDC)," they wrote in February of 2016. Well, once it dies, the SDC will have achieved total anonymity, yet another botched project, yet another bunch of trusting investors screwed over, yet another project thrown onto the heap of crypto memories, a graveyard of hopes.
March 17, 2017 was the day they announced "re-branding" to "Particl" in some complicated scheme of another ICO or whatever they call it (check it out here, under "How is the token exchange structured" section of their FAQ. They operated under delusion that such a "token exchange," due to burning of SDC, as they were exchanged for PART, would create scarcity and therefore the price to rise.
Well, this is how the investors felt about that clusterfuck:
"Based on the Bitcoin protocol but with dual-key stealth addresses and traceable ring signatures added, it came into being as SDcoin in July of 2014. After a couple of more name changes it ended up as ShadowCash. The website was originally sdcoin.co, then shadowcoin.co followed by shadow.cash but for important reasons it changed to shadowproject.io. ShadowCash has built-in features such as ShadowChat which is an end-to-end encrypted messaging system and the team are also working on an e-commerce solution which aims to be the first truly decentralized marketplace."
That was beautiful. And than it died. We have serious suspicions that SDC is a guinea pig for Wall Street guys like Micah Spruill (he's also involved with ARK, another project that needs scrutinizing) who could not give a flying fuck for the investors, believers and / or first adapters and as any money-grubbing freak, grab as much as possible for themselves.
But we can not prove it and will not dig deeper into that "re-branding" fiasco and let you decide for yourselves.
One Year Ago ("is SDC a scam"):
"I don't dare post this question on the BTF because I don't want to be accused of being a pump and dumper shilling for Monero (I'm not). It's a legitimate question. I read that the devs for SDC were the pump and dumpers for Cloakcoin, which they destroyed. What I'm really suspicious of are; 1. It was mined proof of work for only 2 weeks before it was switched to proof of stake. This means that ALL the coins are in the hands of the devs, their investors, and maybe a handful of early miners. These few people could drive the price of the SDC into the ground if they all dumped. Contrast with Monero, it is still being mined? (I am still trying to figure out how to mine it, lol) 2. They have flashy marketing and hired a marketing consultant firm. When you are basically a low cap stock, you are faced with a hard choice if you have limited funds. Do you spend your money on marketing or talented developers? Bitcoin had ZERO marketing. Satoshi Nakamoto did not hire any marketing consultants. Contrast with Monero. Monero has horrible marketing, but talented devs, just like early Bitcoin. Even the name sounds kinda like a V.D. Lol. The website design is kinda scattered and incoherent. I almost overlooked it as an investment until I came across a very short list of equitably mined coins with no instamine nor ninjamine. Scammers of course would favor spending money on marketing while a real startup would concentrate on getting a working product up and running. I really like the web wallet. It worked well. I only lament that it doesn't have a native bar code scanner. SDC has a crappy, unstable wallet that freezes and crashes. It feels like an alpha testing product. 3. They have no ETA for their shadow market. I wish Monero has an ETA for multisig. 4. They have no peer review for their zero knowledge cryptographic algorithm. Their cryptographer is anonymous. Monero has at least some public figures in their core team. Although, the cryptographer for Monero is anonymous also.
Overally, Monero feels more legit, though there are some worrying things. However, Shadowcash feels very much like a scam.
There is a definite need for anonymous digital money. Alternatives to Monero are not satisfactory; 1. Dash - sending money through their gimmicky mixer is excruciatingly slow. 2. Tor hidden service mixers - theives at worst and excruciatingly slow at best. 3. Dark Wallet - in alpha testing forever due to lack of funds. It says that a "known issue" is acccidentally sending your funds without mixing even though you think it has been mixed! Not good. 4. shadowcash - due to lack of academic review, their shadowsend feature is a big black box that could be one big fat fraud just like Cloakcoin. If it works, shadowcash is superior to Monero, but it feels very scammy. I seriously doubt that it will work. 5. Monero - great web wallet that just works.
What do you think? Shadowcash is legit or a scam? Why?" (source)