F**k Keybase, Basically!
I was part of the Spacedrop from the start, having been a Keybase user for a couple of years. I agree this Spacedrop has been a fiasco, but putting all the blame on people who just signed up to Keybase because of the Spacedrop is a bit unfair. Keybase have behaved despicably throughout the whole process.
1: Keybase promised to distribute 2 billion Lumens, beginning in Sept and repeating every month until they were all gone. In reality there were only 3 Spacedrops; one in Sept, one in Nov and this last one in Dec. The October Spacedrop was cancelled due to large numbers of dodgy signups. And now the entire Spacedrop has been cancelled, after the Dec giveaway, with barely 300 million of the promised 2 billion Lumens given away.
Where have the remaining 1,7 billion Lumens ended up, I wonder? No doubt in a few bulging wallets belonging to people high up in Keybase.
2: Keybase actively encouraged Keybase users to "tell their friends and family" about the Spacedrop and also relaxed their initial restriction that the Spacedrop was only open to existing Keybase users with a Github account dating from before the Spacedrop was announced. So it's a bit rich of Keybase to basically say "Hey! Want some free money? All you need is a mobile phone number. Oh, and tell all your friends and family too!" and then act all surprised when lots of people take them up on their offer.
3: Keybase have completely ignored their users throughout this whole process. After the Spacedrop was up and running, the Keybase app was requiring people follow various verification procedures to qualify for the Spacedrop. It would then congratulate them for being qualified for the Spacedrop, before subsequently telling them they were ineligible, when they actually tried to sign up for it.
Keybase's Github account was full of dozens of 'Issues' about this [and not all from bandwagon-jumping scammers] with people asking what the hell was going on and posting various error logs from the app. Keybase did not issue one single response to any of these Issues. Instead contenting themselves with the [very] occasional smarmy blog post about how great the Spacedrop was and [again] encouraging everyone to tell their family and friends about it –even whilst presumably being snowed under at the time with scamming sign-ups, which they've since proved they were unable to prevent.
4: Keybase themselves were completely to blame for cocking this whole thing up. They've shown incredible stupidity in behaving like a man standing in the middle of the road waving fistfuls of money about shouting "Who wants some?!" and then wondering why he gets mugged.
5: After the cock-up, the way Keybase 'resolved' things was even worse. First cancelling the Oct Spacedrop and then cancelling the whole thing in December. So because they hadn't the wit or gumption to filter out the scamming signups, the honest folks get shafted [as usual!].
If Keybase really had no way of stopping scammers signing up, they should have done the honourable thing and rolled back the Spacedrop beneficiary list until it was as originally intended; existing users with existing Github accounts prior to the announcement date and just continued to distribute the remaining Lumens to those people. Instead they've spat the dummy, pocketed the remaining 1,7 billion Lumens themselves and are now left looking like a bunch of untrustworthy incompetent idiots, presiding over a tawdry bait and switch exercise.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
