Ethereum developer Joey Zhou tweeted that the oil-backed Petro that is developed by the Venezuelan government is a blatant copy of Dash. The highly-anticipated public sale of the Petro is scheduled for November 5, 2018.

Petro features copied from Dash

Joey Zhou, in a Twitter post, pointed out that the image used on the 11th page of Petro’s whitepaper was copied from that of another cryptocurrency, Dash.

Petro is the oil-backed cryptocurrency that is being developed by the Venezuelan government to help them circumvent the current trade ban placed on the country.

The revelation by Zhou led to further research on the issue and it was revealed that developers of Petro didn’t just copy the image, they also copied several features of the Dash code.

The Instant Send is one feature that is popular in Dash and Petro has copied it. The developers of Petro claim that feature is very important to the function of the cryptocurrency.

According to their whitepaper, the instantaneous sending is a very important feature of Petro as it allows transactions to be completed within seconds. This feature is an improvement when compared to existing cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin the whitepaper added.

The whitepaper also revealed that Petro’s network will have masternodes, something that Dash became popular for having.

Earlier in August, Ryan Taylor, CEO of Dash Core Group, revealed that Venezuela has become the second largest market for the cryptocurrency, with more than hundred thousand merchants accepting the coin every week.

Public sale of Petro to start on November 5, 2018

The Petro was officially launched by the Venezuelan government and the public sale is expected to begin early next month.

On October 1, 2018, President Maduro revealed to the entire country that the Petro would be available to the public starting from November 5, 2018.

He added that six international crypto exchanges have already announced their intention to list the coin, though the exchanges are yet to be named.

The development team of the app launched a crypto wallet for the digital currency but it is only available to Android users at the moment.

The team also revealed that they have released a new version of the crypto and is currently being hosted on a dedicated website set up by the Venezuelan government.

The whitepaper of Petro revealed that asides oil, other natural resources such as aluminum, diamonds, gold, and iron are also backing the cryptocurrency in different proportions.

Authorities in the country believe that the Petro is an instrument to consolidate Venezuela’s economic stability and financial independence.

It is also a sign of the country’s ambitious and global vision for the creation of a freer, more balanced and fairer international financial system.

Experts not convinced by Petro

The cryptocurrency has yet to convince most experts and crypto investors. Alex Tapscott from the Blockchain Research Institute told BBC that reaction from the cryptocurrency community has been a mixture of positive and negative.

He added that there is very little technical information on the cryptocurrency and there is no proof that each unit of the Petro is backed by oil.

Lastly, the launch of the Petro is an attempt for the Venezuelan government to bypass U.S sanctions, which has been plaguing the country and its economy.