FYI
Raising The Bar - Scam Coins
Over the course of the last month, we have seen an increasing number of scam coins in the marketplace. Bittrex has had the unfortunate displeasure of hosting a few of these. As such, we had a discussion with some members of the community (influential people, pool operators, coin devs, etc) to see what we, as a community, can do about it. This is a crypto currency problem that the community needs to work together to solve.
First, the raw logs can be found here: http://pastebin.com/iZ6uYk7R
Out of the conversation today, we came up with 3 action items:
We will be supporting a community run scam bounty. If a scam coin is listed at an exchange, and we are able to stop it before any users get hurt, a bounty will be paid out. We already have support from a couple big pools and will be talking to others. @CryptoCobain will hold the wallet and lead this effort - ETA 8/1
We will make available a feature to show when a coin has been "vetted". This is just a designation that someone has looked at the code and is willing to put their name to it. This will be a community driven effort. - ETA 8/15
We will be adding additional security checks around markets and wallets similar to our forking and double spend checks. False positives may shutdown markets and currencies while we investigate. We will not be publishing specifics since that will notify attackers. These gates are not a substitute for due diligence by traders but will raise the bar on scammers.
These are not 100% solutions, nor do I think there are any. We are committed to raising the bar and I think these are the right first steps.
Thanks
Richie
Raising The Bar - Scam Coins
Over the course of the last month, we have seen an increasing number of scam coins in the marketplace. Bittrex has had the unfortunate displeasure of hosting a few of these. As such, we had a discussion with some members of the community (influential people, pool operators, coin devs, etc) to see what we, as a community, can do about it. This is a crypto currency problem that the community needs to work together to solve.
First, the raw logs can be found here: http://pastebin.com/iZ6uYk7R
Out of the conversation today, we came up with 3 action items:
We will be supporting a community run scam bounty. If a scam coin is listed at an exchange, and we are able to stop it before any users get hurt, a bounty will be paid out. We already have support from a couple big pools and will be talking to others. @CryptoCobain will hold the wallet and lead this effort - ETA 8/1
We will make available a feature to show when a coin has been "vetted". This is just a designation that someone has looked at the code and is willing to put their name to it. This will be a community driven effort. - ETA 8/15
We will be adding additional security checks around markets and wallets similar to our forking and double spend checks. False positives may shutdown markets and currencies while we investigate. We will not be publishing specifics since that will notify attackers. These gates are not a substitute for due diligence by traders but will raise the bar on scammers.
These are not 100% solutions, nor do I think there are any. We are committed to raising the bar and I think these are the right first steps.
Thanks
Richie
Thanks yourself, and thanks to everyone who participated! We the Sheltered Ones are slowly, slowly learning that Big Mommy simply won't helicopter in. Yep, we're discovering that the Helicopter Regulators won't chop-chop-chop in and save us, in part from scammers but also in part from our own weaknesses.
So, we have to slowly discern, and slowly and at times clumsily, rediscover and reimplement the long-lost art of taking matters into our own hands.
The scene here is a lot like the frontier days of old...the days so unlike the world we Sheltered Ones are habituated to. The days when complaining - which normally gets some kind of action in the "real world" - only gets you, "stick it back in your pie hole, kiddo."
