In July I did 5 audits of such projects as: QuantZ, MindCP AI (short one in my Telegram channel only), LoopGPT, Finys Labs and Cosmoverse. Almost all projects were chosen by subscribers of my Telegram channel, because I started doing polls since July where I allow subscribers to vote for a project they want me to audit next. So you can vote too, all you need is to follow my Telegram channel and stay tuned.

Now let’s break down the most interesting things that I’ve found during my audits, determine some trends and find some little signs which can help you in your research.

The most interesting cases

1. QuantZ website copy

In QuantZ’s audit one of the biggest red flags and the interesting one is that their website turned out to be just a copy of another projects’ websites. Let’s take a look. QuantZ’s website had some similarities with Acurast’s website and it’s almost exact copy of Echelon Prime’s website.

Take a look at websites’ colors and overall style. They’re very same-looking. And the “Environment(s)” section itself is a pure copy.

On the two screenshots above you can see the similarity in Acurast and QuantZ’s designs, colors, logos, etc.

And the last screenshots here. QuantZ and Echelon’s websites. It’s a copy. I recommend you to open each website by links I shared in the beginning and check everything by yourself (QuantZ’s website is not available already, but I put an archived version).

So here is the result, QuantZ’s token chart — https://dexscreener.com/ethereum/0xb6e0abedbe4cda58f9af0ad7b4525f712f989ee8

2. MindCP AI website

This project had quite a little information. However their website said to us that it’s gonna be a scam. Let me show you.

Website’s content was most-likely AI-written. Maybe it was partly humanized or team wrote a couple of sentences by themselves, but all AI-detectors were saying that the text has huge signs of AI.

How can we define if the website is AI-made or not without any detectors? How to become a detector yourself? Quite easy. And I’ll show you how.

We can find some buzzwords on their website:

And there are miswritings on the website. They wrote word “decentalized” differently. Somewhere with Z, and somewhere with S:

Also it’s pretty clear that the website is made on a Framer’s template. I didn’t find the exact copy or the template name, but I did find very same-looking templates, hence MindCP’s website might be made on one of these template or the similar one:

You can check all screenshots here. The templates’ links — https://mojave.framer.website/ and https://thedash.framer.website/

And here is MindCP’s token chart — https://dexscreener.com/ethereum/0x156e1e04338274bb5f6c74f1f81f0241bfd778bd

3. LoopGPT lazy devs

LoopGPT was an old project. But the fact is that almost nothing changed since I saw them first time (last year, if I remember right). Overall it was old but unfinished project which was launching with all those “holes” and with high focus on token, not the product.

There was AI-written content too:

Website was unfinished at that moment with many “dead” buttons and links and you can clearly see that they were making main focus on the token:

Check all screenshots of the website here

There were lots of bots in their X/Twitter profile and Telegram group, here are some of them:

Therefore activity on their posts in socials also was mostly fake (by bots and affiliated KOLs).

And the fun part is that their media was public at some reason, so that’s how I found their “$LGPT IS LIVE” image and posted it in my Telegram channel BEFORE they did in their socials. You can explore it yourselves — https://dribbble.com/shots/26163077-Crypto-violet-3D-social-media-banner

The result is here: https://dexscreener.com/ethereum/0x14b0c738b062bebce9e3150b08cdaf02008b3f2c

4. Finys Labs — fast project, fast dump

This guys where fast everywhere. From the website creation to token dumping. And there were lots of sign which could help you to avoid this project. Let’s explore the most interesting ones shortly.

First of all, their website was made on a free Framer template. This is template’s sales page — https://www.uihub.design/projects/designcube. This is preview page — https://designcube.framer.ai/. And here are some screenshots:

Findys Labs’s website is not live already, but you can check an archived version here — https://web.archive.org/web/20250711155200/https://finyslabs.com/ or see all screenshots that I did here — https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1E3feLpZ-nk34nfLUkQb1QoE9884RuftG

Of course, images from their website also were not unique:

All examples here — https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/189ByCESSu7F91RIGaqTX5uCNKprxEutm

And Whitepaper’s images were not unique too:

One of the biggest red flags is that their logo is not unique. We can find exactly the same logotype at these sources, for example: https://soundcloud.com/fpluso, https://www.facebook.com/fitdocsuk and https://www.rolimons.com/group/11287960 (Screenshots here).

And the last, quite fun fact, is that they wrote token’s ticker diferently. It was “FIN” in Whitepaper, but in socials they wrote it as “FYN” and, finally, on the website it was “FYIN”. This one made me laugh. Screenshots:

I bet you already know what the result looks like (hint: it’s as fast as they developed the whole project) — https://dexscreener.com/ethereum/0xa2a790f9e6b58ebce1c04f876e9b35ca43867187

5. Cosmoverse — A Small Project With Big History

The last one for July is Cosmoverse. They are not live yet, but it’s way more interesting than you could think. This is the biggest audit in July in terms of information quantity. Let’s go through main facts fast:

They haven’t copied website from someone, they did not copy contents either. But the huge red flag for me here is that they already were launching (and maybe launched) before on BSC (now they’re planning to launch on ETH). They had the same website, same socials. But the general concept was a bit different and whitepaper was different too (there were 2 versions).

People were sending them BNBs in terms of a private sale. But we do not know what happened after that, because they deleted dozens of tweets from their X/Twitter profile and hundreds of messages from their Telegram chat.

Considering the fact of clearing up their socials history I can declare that it was sort of scam or unsuccessful launch which they’re now trying to hide and launch as “an old project with years of work behind”. But that’s a lie.

Nothing significant has changed or happened since the year 2021 (project’s birth). Everything they’ve changed by now is just a cover. Empty words and promises. There are lots of details and screenshots in audit of this project so I recommend you to check the full version by yourself in my X/Twitter profile — https://x.com/stepaneight/status/1950929377824240104

I do not expect anything positive from this project and highly recommend you to stay away from it.

Trends

I can highlight several common signs or “red flags” in all these projects.

1. It’s sad but many of scam devs are so lazy that they either build their website on the free template and do not even customize it or just steal website from another project and replace some details.
2. I’ve met armies of bots in projects’ socials. They were among followers/subscribers and also bots were making fake activity on posts, writing fake comments.
3. AI-written websites and whitepapers. This one is very common sign these days. But it’s quite easy to define AI-written content even without detectors.

These are the most common red flags which I met during my audits and not only in July.

Little things

What should you search for when you open a project first time to define if it’s a scam or not fast?

Let me show you several things:

1. This will not be the first time I tell about this, but — “Partners” section on the website. If you open a general low cap project’s website (as we used to see) and see that they mentioned some big companies in “Partners” section (it may be named differently), that means a scam in 99% cases. Here are some examples:

2. Templated website is also often may be a big red flag. Especially if website is not customized but just a copy of a template or what’s even worse if the website is a copy of another project’s one. You have to go through a bunch of websites and analyze them to be able to define if it’s a template made or not from the first glance.

3. Bots among followers/subscribers, bots in the comments and bots making fake activity. Fake activity on posts itself (or in chats). Everything you need is to check who follows project’s X profile, who makes activity on posts (and pay attention on quantity of likes, reposts, comments, etc. from post to post — if it seems the same, that also may be a sign of fake activity which is a red flag), who are members of project’s Telegram chat (if it’s open). Define bots among real users often is quite easy. Here are some examples:

Above is an example of how X/Twitter bots usually look like: random or no header and profile picture, hundreds or thousands of reposts, username duplicates profile name and may has random numbers, bots usually have same amount of following and followers between each other and so on.

Some more bots:

Conclusion

It’s important to be highly critical in crypto, especially in DeFi low-caps projects. Sometimes even one little insignificant thing can save you money. Do not trust blindly what teams say to you, check everything by yourself. Start use these little hints that I showed you above and you’ll see progress in your researching skills.

If you like what I do, make sure to follow me:

X/Twitter: https://x.com/stepaneight
Telegram: https://t.me/stepaneight8
Patreon: patreon.com/StepanEight
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/stepaneight

Thanks for reading and stay safe!

I don’t like long introductions. So, in this article I’ll tell you about most common “red flags” in DeFi projects. This could help you to determine and avoid potential scams long before their token launch. Let’s go.

1. Partners

The first sign is “Partners” section on the website. It also may has name like “Our Partners”, etc. or no name at all, but the name is not so important.

In general, it’s good when project has partners and mention those on the website. But only if you can confirm those partnerships. For example, if a partnership with other project or company is real, both of them usually make announcement posts in socials about this with links, mentions, etc.

And here is how scam projects do: they just put in “Partners” section of their website such companies like CoinMarketCap, Etherscan, DexScreener, DexTools, Uniswap, etc. They argue that like “You will be able to see our token’s chart on DexScreener, our liquidity pool is on UniSwap, we will be listed on CMC and CG, etc. — so we are partners.” And that’s a total scam. Guided by this logic they can add to partners every company they touch while creating and managing project like Telegram, X, Apple, Microsoft and so on, but they do not do this, cause it’s a nonsense.

The real reason of acting like that is to make project seem more valuable in the eyes of those people who do not understand how all that work. Here are some examples:

2. Roadmap

Second sign hides in projects’ roadmap. It’s pretty simple, but significant.

If you see that project mention something like “CoinMarketCap/CoinGecko listings; DexTools/DexScreener update; Trending payments; etc.” — this is a red flag and here is why.

Serious projects will not mention such simple and regular things in their roadmap, cause that all fits in one word — marketing. Here are some examples:

3. Fake followers/bots

It’s important to check project’s X followers and Telegram chat members (if members list is open), because some scammy teams may forget to hide it and you can find something interesting there.

In X/Twitter you can’t see the full list of profile’s followers, but sometimes even to see a little part of them is enough. Also you could check activity on project’s posts (who makes comments and what are they look like; who makes reposts; quantity of comments, reposts, likes, views. Compare it to each other from one post to another and don’t forget compare activity to the amount of followers). Here are some examples of fake followers/bots and fake activity in projects’ X/Twitter profiles:

In Telegram chats/groups you can check the list of members to find bots there. Usually bots have same patterns, like: same type of profile pictures, names, usernames, bios; they all may be always online or offline at the same time, etc. Take a look at some examples:

Also I saw how bots chatting in project’s Telegram goup to make fake activity. For me it looked funny, but someone could got fooled by that. Here how it looked like:

Conclusion

I think that’s enough for the first time. If you like this kind of information, let me know and I will write more useful content like this. Don’t forget to follow me on my socials:

X/Twitter: https://x.com/stepaneight
Telegram: https://t.me/stepaneight8

Thank you for reading, take care and till the next time!