Moon Dex: Here Last Night, Gone today. Hack or Exit Scam?

The internet can have a very short memory. For the benefit of history I would like to tell my version of the tale on one exchange MoonDex.

Having been active in the BitShares community for a while I noticed a new exchange pop up called MoonDex.io. Their explorer http://explorer.moondexcoin.org/network is still up, but I don’t expect it will be for long. I found the website, discord chat room and chatted with the founders who were shy of sharing much about their identity. (bad sign)

MoonDex was a new portal, into the BitShares ecosystem for MasterNode coins. Whatever Masternode is I am sure it is great, but I have not been fully able to appreciate its benefits, understand it or wrap my head around it. But there was a vibrant community there.

BitShares is a decentralized exchange and allows anyone to build a new gateway. Open Ledger, Crypto-Bridge, GDex, RuDex are a few of the gateways. MoonDex was a new gateway, and I had not heard much about it in the main BitShares Channels. (warning sign)

MoonDex was focused on their subcommunity. They promised a new exchange, promissory notes for BitCoins, and more. While they did not completely hide the fact they were built on the Bitshares platform, they certainly did not advertise it. They claimed they were building lots of new features and this was an interim step, in getting everything they wanted launched.

I joined the discord Channel, and inquired, sort of trying to see who they were and if someone in the regular BitShares community would vouch for them. I know enough people in the BitShares world were I or a friend I knew on telegram would be able to vouch for who they were. They did not offer any proof, obviously they had been in the BitShares Channels -Which mainly takes place on Telegram- but remained vague and for legal reasons did not wish to be publically know.

I saw the exchange up for several weeks, I think. Maybe longer August-November?
I can say how much activity was at the exchange.

And some of these numbers, actually look lower than I recall.

Then all of sudden everything went quiet.

I think this was an exit scam. It may have been technical difficulties.

I was not there. I know the website was down though.

So we can see that they may have been 316 people who bought into the Moondex Exchange.

And we can get a feeling to the amount of assets that may have been deposited and the number of people.

There were rumors that someone else might have been trying to take over the project, there may have been a hack, there may have been an exit scam. I did not see activity taking place in the discord channel working with people to get their assets back. There was no, “Sorry guys this whole exchange is down, give us time or contact us via another channel -email or phone number- to get your assets back.” Because they built on a the BitShares platform it would have been very easy to sign and or verify a message with the MoonDex Keys at bitshares.org and then send a cryptographically signed message via a non secure channel -email- requesting payment to another address.

Since this has not happened; I think it is a here last night good today exit scam.

Edit: See follow up article -in comments- that was brought to my attention claiming a hack. Note: it is odd that this article was deleted by the author after 10 days? (Maybe that hack was an inside job, I don't know.)

Ironic, especially since the exchange was named Moon. Something that disappears every morning.

Moondex and there assets and all activity will forever be recorded on the BitShares blockchain. Anyone can go in and inspect every transaction getting all the details they want. I don’t really know too much more about what happened. However, thought it worthwhile to write a brief account for anyone wondering about this in the future.

-Cryptick1