If it's a scam, why do they have a Github organization with 50+ repos? go-ethereum alone has 6469 commits by 59 authors[1]. Would be the most elaborate and time consuming scam ever.
Money buys a lot of commits. Give me a few million dollars and we'll get together a group of people that will build an entire computer from discrete transistors. People involved and amount of work doesn't make something worthwhile, reasonable, or viable, it just means that people work for money.
I would give you a few million dollars to see that if I had them! It would be an incredibly useful project for education :D
For 18 million bucks people would go to great lengths...
"If it's a scam, why do they have [trappings of an organisation]?" - every dupe of an MLM, Ponzi or pump'n'dump ever, trying to reassure themselves. There's a reason scammers put up fronts.
It's not the _trappings_ of an organization that are important, it's the fact that they have lots of working code. The Ethereum network does exactly what it claims to do, and does it well.
You're saying you've verified this yourself then? This comment notes the curious lack of evidence and that the example relies on handwaving https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10027569
One thing we can be certain of in the future: every new prospective altcoin will be sure to prepopulate its Github with Rockstar. https://github.com/avinassh/rockstar/
Who are these people[1] and what credentials do they have to build and run a cryptocurrency platform?