UPDATED 21:27 EDT / JANUARY 29 2018

EMERGING TECH

ICO for Prodeum, a blockchain for vegetables, turns out to be rotten

An initial coin offering pitching an Ethereum blockchain-based token for the fruit and vegetable tracking has shut down in what appears to be another ICO scam.

Called Prodeum, the company claimed that it wanted to build a new price look-up code system that would allow consumers to track where their fruit and vegetables came from. According to a cached version of its page, “the PLU process is based on business needs and consumers are normally left out of the process. Prodeum’s goal is to bring detailed PLU system information to the consumer so they have a better understanding of where their food comes from.”

It all sounded good in theory and the idea isn’t without precedent. Companies such as IBM Corp. and Project Provenance Ltd. have built related blockchain-based platforms. But that’s where the similarities end, as visitors to the Prodeum site were briefly presented by one word and one word only, “Penis,” before the site itself was completely taken down.

Exactly how much was stolen is not entirely clear. According to The Next Web, Prodeum completed 18 percent from its funding goal of between 2,100 and 5,400 Ethereum, meaning that based on Ethereum currently trading at $1,155, it may have taken in between $321,000 and $1.12 million.

That said, Motherboard claims that the entire scam netted a grand total of $11 based on the Ethereum address that was advertised on Prodeum’s site as the ICO address. A post on a forum made by the alleged scammer behind the ICO claimed that he made $3,000 from Prodeum along with an additional $10,000 from another ICO scam called Bitflur.

The scam had some other interesting twists thrown in for good measure. Business Insider said three blockchain experts linked to Prodeum claimed that they have nothing to do with the organization and are victims of identity theft.

But the best of all may have been with the name of the company to begin with. Bloomberg reported that Prodeum appears to be an intentional misspelling of Prodium, a drug that treats urinary-tract infections.

This isn’t the first ICO scam and it won’t be the last. The most recent case of an ICO exit scam involved a company called Confido, which was pitching an Ethereum blockchain-based app for making payments and tracking shipments that raised the equivalent of $374,000 in November.

Image: Prodeum

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