After initially becoming known for providing supposedly accurate ICO ratings, ICOBench has since branched out to encompass several other similar services, including offering a list of upcoming Initial Exchange Offerings (IEOs) with ratings.

The platform currently charges as much as 3 BTC, or currently around $33,000 for premium placement, potentially forcing even terrible projects up to the top of the search results, while those that don’t pay up are left at the back of the list, if they are ever published at all.

However, what is most disturbing is the fact that despite its prominence as a platform, the actual operators behind ICOBench remain practically anonymous. Currently, the LinkedIn page lists over 220 people as employees, though in our research we found that practically all of these are simply ICOBench Experts.

The company is supposedly based at a London address that doesn’t exist, and is instead an amalgamation of two address — one from London and one from Ukraine. Not only this, but two of the individuals suspected to be managing the platform (Nikolay Shkilev and Vladimir Nikitin) appear to be doing whatever they can to obscure their involvement with the platform.

How can you trust the authenticity of a platform, when you don’t even know who is behind it? The answer is, you probably shouldn’t.

ICOBench Charges for ‘Expert’ Status

ICOBench has been frequently criticized for allowing obvious shill ‘Experts’ to continue using the platform. Simply browsing through the list of ICOBench it becomes immediately apparent which are disingenuous.

With the bulk of ‘Experts’ typically giving out an average review of between 3 and 4 stars, anybody handing out perfect scores consistently stands out as suspicious, with Sergey Sevantsyan and Miruna-Maura Barbulescu being just two of the many outliers.

Curiously, both the quantity and quality of new ‘Experts’ appear to have taken a nosedive as of late, with relatively few new ‘Experts’ appearing on the site. This growing scarcity may be explained by a 2018 exposé, which claims that ICOBench is, in fact, charging its experts as much as 2 BTC to be guaranteed ‘Expert’ status.

By obtaining ‘Expert’ status, these individuals could then add credibility to their knowledge of the field, similar to obtaining a technology certification without actually doing any work. Not only that but it might even be an investment since several ‘Experts’ have been caught selling positive reviews for as much as $500 each.

Overall, in a time where ICOs and IEOs are again returning to public focus, it is more important than ever to do your own due diligence, rather than relying on potentially fraudulent third-party reviews.

How do you perform your due diligence when investing in a project? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!