Written By Paul Sokolov on

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Important Notice on Guarda SAFU

Important Notice on Guarda SAFU

Dear users, we understand the anxiety you are having right now related to the “GoDaddy” incident.

We do confirm that we are being a little silent lately. However, we ask you to understand that at this very moment we have meetings with legal advisors, police, blockchain investigation companies, exchanges. We have been fighting for you 24/7 since the incident happened and continue to do so now.

Guarda stands by its core values so we decided to move with the following course of actions in order to help you get your funds back.

Current status

  1. A considerable amount of the stolen funds was transferred to ETH, then transferred to BTC via Uniswap, and accumulated on several addresses
  2. We track transactions 24/7 as funds move between wallets. We keep working in close contact with all major exchanges and CDA, constantly report new addresses, some of them have already been marked as a scam, for example: https://explorer.xinfin.network/addr/xdc6d6f33467529ac73804aad77ef8d8cfe16520ba3
  3. The good news is that we have been able to catch a certain amount of funds on the exchanges and we are now discussing the options to transfer the funds back

Legal

  1. We are still gathering information on those affected as well as potential financial losses. At the moment, there are around 100 people who have submitted the ticket to our support team. It is critical that the affected users provide as much information as possible.
  2. 15% of those who submitted the ticket claimed that they are ready to file a collective action lawsuit and their number is constantly growing.
  3. The lawsuit is filed with the police on the fact of detected fraud and theft, through hacking the account of the domain registrar. The application form to the police is still being discussed with the police, for now, we ask you to write your consent to file the lawsuit to our support team. We will send out the form to everyone individually.
  4. Upon revealing the full amount of losses — we are considering the option of filing a lawsuit against “GoDaddy”, possibly a collective action, with the participation of other crypto companies affected in 2020 – at the moment we are researching the cases of crypto companies affected by similar attacks and preparing requests. Perhaps the help of our users will also be needed here.

Financials & Refunds

  1. Due to the fact that we never had nor have access to any of our users’ funds and the fact that our internal resources have not been compromised directly as well as our Terms of Service §7, our liability is limited for losses for any reason. Although it is not our direct fault that the funds were stolen, we realize that we are the ones to be held accountable.We understand that for many of you these funds could have been long-term savings and constituted a significant percentage of your income. We are convinced that trust and reputation are the most crucial factors in our industry, so we will seek every opportunity to pay back the money to all victims, even if we have to do it at our own expense.
  2. To guarantee the compensation, we are collecting detailed information about the victims, the amount of losses, we are consulting with the police, lawyers, and financial services on what the plan of funds recovery should be, how refunds should be made in terms of tax laws, what are the necessary documents are to be signed with the users in order to pay them back.
  3. Taking into account the amounts of lost funds, we are considering various alternative plans. The compensation plans which are most likely to be executed (may change and only takes place when we receive approval from the tax, police, and lawyers):
    1. Everyone affected will be reimbursed for losses up to $2k. This will be done in the lost crypto or BTC. Alternatively, $4k in Guarda tokens with a 3-year vesting
    2. 50% BTC refund (at least $2k) to everyone who lost from $2k up to $10k. Alternatively, the doubled sum of losses in Guarda tokens with a 3-year vesting
    3. Up to 20% BTC refund (at least $5k) to everyone who lost over $10k. Alternatively, the sum of losses + an additional 50% in Guarda tokens with a 3-year vesting
    4. Guarda tokens to be released in February – March 2021
    5. If you choose not to have compensation in Guarda tokens, you should clearly state that in the support. You will be receiving your refund from SAFU until it gets completely paid (see 4)
  4. In addition to the compensation plan, we will set up the Guarda SAFU fund, where we will transfer 2% of monthly income (don’t confuse it with profit) and from which we will recompense those who got affected by the incident.
    1. We will continue to maintain the fund until all the lost funds will be reimbursed
    2. The funds which will be returned during the investigation will also be transferred to the fund
    3. All the refunds will come from SAFU
  5. To receive a refund, you will have to provide an ID and confirm the ownership of the wallet, as well as waive Guarda the right to claim funds collected through the court or as part of a police proceeding. We will be collecting the information approximately until January 21st. The questionnaire will be sent to the e-mails provided by those who have submitted the ticket to our support team.

Upcoming updates

  1. We will no longer be using the services of “GoDaddy”. Currently looking for a more reliable domain registrar. With a preliminary check of their security systems.
  2. Soon, we will release an update of our app as well as the web version, containing multiple fixes of possible issues, and we will also reduce the dependence on the server for our desktop application. Additionally, we will make a comprehensive analysis of the possible threats and openly publish it for the benefit of the whole crypto community.
  3. We will add the functionality of signature messages to confirm ownership of the wallet — this will also be necessary in order to receive refunds.
  4. Although Guarda is non-custodial, for those who wish to add 2FA to their backup via email or Google Authentication, this feature will be available shortly.
  5. We plan to look for white-hat hackers who could help find the funds as well as with the infrastructure and code review. More details coming soon. The bounty will be launched shortly after the release of Guarda token.
  6. We will come back with more updates on January 15th. We hope that by that time we will be able to provide comprehensive and complete information.

How can you help?

  1. The best way to help right now is to report the stolen funds to our Support Center if you have not done it already
  2. If you logged into your wallet on Dec 30, just to make sure please create new wallets on Guarda and send your funds to newly-created addresses
  3. Confirm your consent to file a collective action lawsuit
  4. Also, we kindly ask you to remember that we are a licensed company, working in accordance with EU laws and that we will never abandon this investigation until we get to the bottom of this. We stand by our promises and assure you once again to keep everything completely transparent. Also, we are asking you to be patient and not to flood our communities with meaningless messages as it means that we would have to spend time answering the same questions all over again instead of continuing with the investigation.