Again, why do you keep normalizing crappy, bullshit behavior? Is the standard of being a filthy liar  something that you want to carry over into the NEM world?

Please watch what you are saying and protecting. You appear to be the most vocal protecting the image of UP. I am not saying you cannot, but it doesn't give me comfort to know that one is fighting so much in the crowd for the causes of UP. Fact is, he did something that was wrong in the first place and we should not even defend that anymore, unless one also a a finger in the pie.

This is all water under the bridge and need no more discussions about. We should just continue moving along. The more we talk the more ugly discussions will shape up to be.

In any case, this is not a thread to continue all discussions about NEM as it has too much emotions in it. Let's not allow emotions cloud our mind. I have taken the liberty to start a new thread here: https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/650337

Not protecting his image.  Protecting his actions.  Have you tried starting a coin on this website?  Your coin on the announce section goes from page 1 to page 20, unless you bump it with sockpuppets like UtopianFuture did until NEM gained a community.

If it were my coin project I would had done the same thing in a heart beat.   You can argue what he did was dishonest but there are far worse crimes in crypto currencies, NxT's distribution and all the IPO scams are indicative of such.

There was a poll thread and close to under 50% was in favour of keeping UtopianFuture on.   You may claim I am the most vocal but I am vocalizing for the silent big minority.  So UtopianFuture padded NEM with fake popularity for awhile?  Who cares.. what I care is that NEM has the best distribution of 3000 stakeholders, with taint analysis, and PoI innovation.

I looks like the old NEM thread was locked before I could post my response. In any event, these are my thoughts:

I'm saddened and disappointed by what has happened today. There is no excuse for what utopianfuture did. It's unprofessional to bash another coin anonymously using sockpuppet accounts. It's worse that those same sockpuppet accounts were used to sign up for NEM stakes because that goes directly against NEM's fair distribution principle.

Having said all that, I would like to thank utopianfuture for what he has done for NEM up until now. Without utopianfuture, NEM wouldn't exist. He conceived of the idea and recruited a lot of the core dev team, including myself. He has also done a number of things behind the scenes, including paying some out-of-pocket costs (in fiat).

I've heard from a plurality of the core dev team and they mostly share this sentiment. I'm sure I will hear from the rest of the team at some point over the weekend. But, aside from a lot of extra gossip, this transgression shouldn't impact the development of NEM. utopianfuture is not a developer and has not written a single line of code.

I'm hopeful that NEM will emerge from this situation even stronger. NEM was always built around decentralization and fairness and having a single "leader" is really diametrically opposed to that. NEM needs to have a community, not a leader.

As for myself, can you trust me? That's up to you to decide, but I will share a few things:

1. I've never heard of simcoin.
2. I'm to busy coding to have sockpuppet account.
3. I don't have a multiple personality disorder.

Let's try to move forward instead of living in the past. The open alpha is less than two weeks away!

P.S. The core dev team will be reaching out to the community to find someone to lead the marketing and biz-dev of NEM going forward. Understandably, we want to spend most of our time coding until NEM is ready.

P.P.S. I will be on the #ournem IRC channel for the next half hour if anyone has questions for me.

utopianfuture u seem like a complete asshole right now! really, shame on u

RIP...
really sad for the other developers who did all the work for u

I'm going to echo jaguar0625 on this, in my own words:

To the NEM 'community' :
Stop whining about needing a f**king leader, man up, and get working on rescuing NEM from this clusterfuck.
You are supposed to be an egalitarian, fair and equal project, but all I see are a bunch of kids looking for a new babysitter.
No-one is going to rescue you, if you won't do it yourself.

The very title of this thread pisses me off; "NEM's leader....."
You shouldn't need a leader, a strong community is what will get results.

I suggest that the first thing someone does is to find out exactly what UP did with sockpuppets and stakes....I've seen a lot of accusations and not very much evidence.
Does he have one stake-holding sock-puppet or 20 ?
Until you know the extent of the damage, you can't fix it.

Awesome! I really like how this situation is handled!

If you need any help with something, feel free to PM me!

Many interesting comments have been sent during the last night. Few thoughts based on those.

utopianfuture's deed was not so dirty as some famous persons' in real life. And those people didn't resign. By resigning utopianfuture increased the level of trust to the NEM community.

There will be newcomers to NEM and they may ask, can NEM be trusted.
The current NEM-haters will say "NO". Then the question is how the current NEM-supporters can assure the newcomers?
Is it enough to have utopianfuture's explanation and core team's comments? No. There is needed the working servers and clients. When the NEM coin is running, everybody understand that utopianfuture's deed was just a human mistake and it didn't affect to NEM.

Also then can be evaluated Come-f-a's accusations, which already have been raising to astronomical yards    and his real identity, which he keeps advertising and hinting with certain writing styles and by saying he has been in the NEM project. Has been in the NEM project and now tries to destroy it? I'd think twice when hiring such a guy in my projects.