Silk Road forums
Support => Feature requests => Topic started by: BlarghRawr on August 03, 2012, 05:35 am
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I am going to explain why this is necessary, what it should cost, a way to do it, and how it should work. I may even go into pseudo-code, not sure if that is the right term, for how to make it.
Why is it needed: Simply put, because vendor-scams are too common when it comes to moneypaks and the like.
Cost: $150, unlike the new Vendor account fee.
The way;
But it should be an exclusionary account-flag. That is, a regular-vendor can not also be a bitcoin-vendor. In enforcing this rule, the vendors will be protected from themselves and others. I say themselves because, as I'm sure some of you might have noticed, some vendors do Cash-In-Mail deals, and the like. This isn't safe for them, nor is just selling bitcoins for moneypaks. You can't always track who buys, but you can track who withdraws. Thus, since vendor-security is key, you force the vendors into a more secure practice.
As for how the method of selling would actually work, btc-vendors would have to have their account funded already, and then they would create a listing for the coins, to be paid via whatever method the vendor would like to be paid in. When a listing is made, those coins go into "pre-escrow" where they aren't directly available to the vendor, unless they disable the listing in which the coins are trapped. *Another way to do it this that the vendor just has to have them at the time they accept the order. That way, they can see the potential purchase, shuffle their coins to the Road, then accept it and at that point it would go into escrow.
When a buyer selects a listing and requests a chance to purchase it, the vendor is given a choice to reject or accept the order before the "address" field is available to them. This part is meant to allow the vendor to decide who they want to deal with.
Upon rejecting an order, the buyer gets a token automessage from SR support to say sorry but Mr X didn't want to sell to you. Upon accepting an order, the coins go into escrow, the vendor gets access to the "address" field, likely containing a moneypak code in the case of MP vendors, and then he cashes it out before finalizing the order to send the coins to the buyer. For something more physical, the vendor waits until whatever he is waiting for to arrive before finalizing. No fee for transactions of this method.
The lack of fee is partly due to the cost of the account, and partly because it would just be cruel to charge a fee to exchange coins on top of charging a fee to buy product. In addition, the cost of the account is to prevent people from attempting to skirt the rules via putting up a listing for, say, 50 bitcoins to be paid in two ounces of pot mailed to them. Since such a listing is unfair to SR in that it would skirt the fee... bitcoin-vendor accounts should also have a fee.
But the biggest thing in my suggestion is to make them wholly separate. You can't sell bitcoins if you sell drugs. Or at least, you shouldn't. For a vendor selling illicit items, this is not a safe practice, so in making it a rule at the same time as opening up another method for bitcoin exchanges, that makes it safer and provides scam-protection for the buyers... Everyone benefits.
It could even be that someone who purchases a vendor account automatically gets an activation-code for a bitcoin-vendor account. This would be an option for the less paranoid who don't mind SR being the only ones capable of determining the connection between the accounts. And at the same time, it allows the bitcoin-vendors to do their business separately. The small cause of note to arise from this specific implementation is that a vendor could sell the bitcoin-vendor code to reduce the cost of purchasing a vendor-account, thus making a scam cheaper to do.
However, in allowing SR to be aware of the link between accounts(again, not strictly safe. Better to purchase both), should a vendor decide to pull a double-scam both via drugs and bitcoins(not so easy, with the above buyer-protections described), should one account get flagged and disabled as a vendor, both could be disabled.
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what are you smoking?
really good idea, btw.
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what are you smoking?
really good idea, btw.
In a moment I'll be smoking JahBUDS Sour Diesel so I can finish my reviews for him. Then later tonight, I'm going to hit CaliforniaBuddy's GDP to add a review to the lottery.
It's just a thing I think SR needs, mostly. The simplest form, and the one I would like to see, is full separation to prevent the drug-sellers from risking themselves with moneypak. I hate to see those, or worse yet the Cash-in-mail, so it takes care of forcing the vendors to protect themselves...The main reason I think SR needs it is that it makes moneypak scams MUCH harder to pull off. It came about as a desire to protect the vendors, though.
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what are you smoking?
really good idea, btw.
In a moment I'll be smoking JahBUDS Sour Diesel so I can finish my reviews for him. Then later tonight, I'm going to hit CaliforniaBuddy's GDP to add a review to the lottery.
It's just a thing I think SR needs, mostly. The simplest form, and the one I would like to see, is full separation to prevent the drug-sellers from risking themselves with moneypak. I hate to see those, or worse yet the Cash-in-mail, so it takes care of forcing the vendors to protect themselves...The main reason I think SR needs it is that it makes moneypak scams MUCH harder to pull off. It came about as a desire to protect the vendors, though.
Good man! Good man!
Vendors definitely need more safety, seeing as everyone thinks their job is such a cake walk. -_-
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I quite like this idea, you should send it to Indica | Sativa BlarghRawr.
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I quite like this idea, you should send it to Indica | Sativa BlarghRawr.
+1.
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+1 to everything in this thread. Tired of hearing about people being scammed daily (and getting scammed myself) by bitcoin vendors on SR.
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BIGGER THAN HAZZARD COUNTY BOSS!! IT'S YOUR FAVORITE FATBOY INBRED!!!
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BIGGER THAN HAZZARD COUNTY BOSS!! IT'S YOUR FAVORITE FATBOY INBRED!!!
which would be ?
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Just bumping to keep the idea alive.
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The part about the bit coin address, could it also work to send it to the username? Is moneypaks available world wide? And are you saying that if someone bought a vendor account then they could also have a seperate bitcoin vendor account all together in a bundled price of 150 bucks?
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I think it should be a feature of NON vendor accounts. I posted my thought on it here
http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=39855.0
a market where the demand makes the listing and the supply purchases it without the nym of the BTC holder being revealed to the requestor
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BUMP. 'cause it's still good. Flush, what'chu think?
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There's an issue though when you propose that BTC vendors should have their accounts already funded. I vend *only* bitcoins here, and I vend bitcoins elsewhere as well. I keep 100% of my bitcoin supply in my blockchain wallet and not in SR's wallet. Recent SR downtime reminded me of how necessary this is - at least in the case of having a heck of a lot of btcs.
So what would happen in those cases? I couldn't sell here because I don't keep my bitcoins in my SR wallet?
The rest of your idea, I think, is awesome - and has my support 110%.
The idea is to force the bitcoin sellers to actually have the bitcoins... another way to do it is that the vendor just has to have them at the time they accept the order. That way, they can see the potential purchase, shuffle their coins to the Road, then accept it and at that point it would go into escrow.
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There's an issue though when you propose that BTC vendors should have their accounts already funded. I vend *only* bitcoins here, and I vend bitcoins elsewhere as well. I keep 100% of my bitcoin supply in my blockchain wallet and not in SR's wallet. Recent SR downtime reminded me of how necessary this is - at least in the case of having a heck of a lot of btcs.
So what would happen in those cases? I couldn't sell here because I don't keep my bitcoins in my SR wallet?
The rest of your idea, I think, is awesome - and has my support 110%.
The idea is to force the bitcoin sellers to actually have the bitcoins... another way to do it is that the vendor just has to have them at the time they accept the order. That way, they can see the potential purchase, shuffle their coins to the Road, then accept it and at that point it would go into escrow.
haha, i thought of that almost immediately after posting. as long as the funding isn't required in order to RECEIVE potential orders, then that would be perfect. currently, i ask people to message me before placing order so i can confirm that i have enough to fill their order immediately after they submit payment. if i can't fill it, i let them know, refer them to other reputable bitcoin vendors, and tell them when i anticipate getting more coins (in case they aren't needing the coins right then). then, when i tell them i can accept it, i still don't cash out the MP until i'm on the blockchain page getting ready to send the bitcoins.
this has been working really well, and it makes me feel better to be able to tell someone whether or not i can fill their order BEFORE i'm in possession of their money!
if there were a system in place like the one you suggest, i think that would accomplish nearly the same thing -- and would cut down on the number of scams exponentially.
It's win/win, and that's exactly what I was aiming for with this idea. A method that doesn't hinder the honest merchants but does hinder the scammers... it's so perfect. It also doesn't need to be kept separate from drug-vending, but I still think that is a better idea, just to prevent the (thankfully decreasing) number of drug-vendors who buy/sell bitcoins from the same account.
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CaptainMal is the effin' shit!
everyone else should just lay down.. and hibernate!
pay this Vendor!!!
/thumbs
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CaptainMal is the effin' shit!
everyone else should just lay down.. and hibernate!
pay this Vendor!!!
/thumbs
Wish I'd have known about CaptainMal a couple of weeks ago. Had a newbie buyer trying to figure out how to get bitcoins to fund their SR account. While I know the usual options (bitinstant etc.) I'm sure someone whose business is vending btc knows more ways than I do. But as has been mentioned, the scam factor is so high, I steered them away from SR and tor vendors in general.
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CaptainMal is the effin' shit!
everyone else should just lay down.. and hibernate!
pay this Vendor!!!
/thumbs
Wish I'd have known about CaptainMal a couple of weeks ago. Had a newbie buyer trying to figure out how to get bitcoins to fund their SR account. While I know the usual options (bitinstant etc.) I'm sure someone whose business is vending btc knows more ways than I do. But as has been mentioned, the scam factor is so high, I steered them away from SR and tor vendors in general.
solid move!
definitely go see CaptainMal(#1), then Sugar Mama(#2), BTCMaster, BTCPal, BTCKing, GoodTimes..
there are a lot of honest people who will cash your Mpaks out there.. but CaptainMal is so far the best, period.
not even trying to boost his ego or toot his horn or anything... just two back to back remarkable experiences, period.
/thumbs
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Bump, because it's still good.
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The biggest loop hole is just the pure fact, everyone is using Tor, so there is no way to figure out who is vending, unless you're looking into account records/information. So while the idea is good, without breaching data there would be no way to distinguish who is a selling what, when and where. In a real world scenario where this was completely legitimate than you could address the concerns much easier, such as by IP address, at the simplest forms. However, in this setup, it would be near impossible if possibly impossible itself to implement.
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The biggest loop hole is just the pure fact, everyone is using Tor, so there is no way to figure out who is vending, unless you're looking into account records/information. So while the idea is good, without breaching data there would be no way to distinguish who is a selling what, when and where. In a real world scenario where this was completely legitimate than you could address the concerns much easier, such as by IP address, at the simplest forms. However, in this setup, it would be near impossible if possibly impossible itself to implement.
So don't worry about that part of it. Giving an escrow-system wherein the bitcoin-sellers have to have the coins ON HAND to accept an order(where they go into escrow) would still be an improvement over how SR works, right now. That would significantly cut down on scams, and because of that, you won't have as much of a vendor-rush to join your place... because the scammers will all stay here.
The only part that can never be fixed is selective scamming. There is no way to prevent that. But even this one single feature, assuming you have the other SR-features, would put Snuj market ahead of the curve and theoretically make it the better market...
And if you ever do implement it before SR does(if SR ever does), I'll fully endorse your market as THE market to shop at.
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The biggest loop hole is just the pure fact, everyone is using Tor, so there is no way to figure out who is vending, unless you're looking into account records/information. So while the idea is good, without breaching data there would be no way to distinguish who is a selling what, when and where. In a real world scenario where this was completely legitimate than you could address the concerns much easier, such as by IP address, at the simplest forms. However, in this setup, it would be near impossible if possibly impossible itself to implement.
So don't worry about that part of it. Giving an escrow-system wherein the bitcoin-sellers have to have the coins ON HAND to accept an order(where they go into escrow) would still be an improvement over how SR works, right now. That would significantly cut down on scams, and because of that, you won't have as much of a vendor-rush to join your place... because the scammers will all stay here.
The only part that can never be fixed is selective scamming. There is no way to prevent that. But even this one single feature, assuming you have the other SR-features, would put Snuj market ahead of the curve and theoretically make it the better market...
And if you ever do implement it before SR does(if SR ever does), I'll fully endorse your market as THE market to shop at.
That's easy to implement. Done.
If you sell BTC on Snuj, your account to sell BTC would be pre-escrowed into a specific account set aside for each vendor, for them to deposit funds into. The only way for them to retrieve them is buy cancelling their listing, and they would pay the transaction fee for the recovery of it. In addition to the seller fees that will be coming soon, whilst I still want to give adequate time for valid SR members to join (while I'll more than likely leave an additional gap in between for very high rated sellers). It's simply a rule I'll need to write in for the ToS if you're selling/buying BTC that your account is pre-funded prior to the listing.
Again, it's a great idea. But the initial would be way out of scope of what I think is possible, but this option is very easily do'able.
-Jimmy
EDIT: Done.
http://snujl7n5dahb4zny.onion/market/index.php?threads/vendor-accounts.16/#post-17