An anonymous reader writes:
IBTimes just reported that Razormind is cashing in on the war between hardforked Ethereum and old chain Ethereum Classic.
Originally expected to die within hours — Ethereum Classic has instead gained mainstream adoption among exchanges such as Poloniex, Kraken, and Bitfinex to name but a few and is now traded under ETC.
Just the Friday before the hardfork, Razormind started a crowdsale for DeOS their direct rival to Ethereum, meant to be a publically owned and run global blockchain. They envision it being used to register and verify ownership of property, identity, and to run smart contracts for financial transactions.
The anxiety over the hardfork originates in the downfall of the DAO project. The flagship project of the Ethereum Foundation which recapitalized them after their own crowdfunding ran out; the DAO failed spectacularly when $70 million dollars were lost due to a hack. One industry experts agree was easily preventable by DAO authors Slock.it whose CEO is Stephan Tual — a close personal friend and business partner of Vitalik Buterin.
Accompanying the hack was rather a terse letter from 'the attacker' claiming their action was legal and they would sue if a hardfork occurred. This threat has not materialised to date. This letter was shortly followed by an announcement by Stephan Tual of Slock.it that "over 70% of the DAO funds are now directly under the control of Slock.it and Ethereum Foundation"
to reassure the community. This had the additional effect of raising the question of how a decentralized, unhackable, secure DAO could suddenly have all it's funds centralized to so few people so quickly.
While Ethereum was vulnerable, and shortly before the much opposed hard fork and throughout it Vitalik Buterin and Consensys were meeting in London with r3cev to perform yet another hard fork of Ethereum to sell a permissioned version strictly for the banks. Approaching the banks could be interpreted as trying to 'cash out' before the situation worsens and before the hard work begins of moving to Proof of Stake within six months for both chains to prevent them becoming obsolete.
Amidst all this Razormind put forward DeOS with very little fuss and almost no publicity. They have let known they are opening offices in London, have vetted at least one exchange to start trading DEOS immediately, are known to be in talks with banks in Canada, and recently announced a 5 million EURO investment into two blockchain banks in Europe.