[CommunityDiscussion] I always see people talking about using community chosen transaction arbiters for escrow, but how would that realistically work safely?

In fact, how are disputes settled at all? I've only been scammed once (and it was probably for the best, I love stims too much to get into a meth habit) and it was on The Marketplace and the admins fucked up the dispute anyway so I never got to see how it really works. Can someone describe that process to me?

And with transaction arbiters...


Comments


[1 Points] QLDGreat:

Here are my opinions.

How can you settle a dispute without sacrificing your privacy to the arbiter?

Mix the fuck out of your coins.

How do you prevent LE from becoming arbiters and seeing things that'd incriminate people? I'd imagine it would be much easier to become an arbiter than a full time member of the staff of a site.

Arbiters should be marketplace owners and other vendors. 1 key held by the vendor, 1 key held by the marketplace, and a 3rd held by another vendor who releases the money to whoever the marketplace determines should receive it in the case of a dispute.

How do you rate an arbiter? Whoever loses the dispute will likely file a bad review on the arbiter, but you need a review system to stop arbiters from just choosing a side at random to give the money to so they get paid faster.

The marketplace should be the one who makes this decision.

How will an arbiter be chosen for a transaction? Random selection opens the door to people who just want fast money and don't care about the transaction's outcome, and selection based on rating is hard because rating arbiters is hard.

The 3rd arbiter in a transaction should be another vendor - one who has a sold transaction record. And the 3rd arbiter should be required to toe the line decided by the marketplace.


[1 Points] wellletsese344:

I dont know where you heard this, there is no such thing as random "arbiters" for markets, who are these random people to judge who is right and who is wrong? Market staff can act as arbiters but usually its fairly clear based on reputation and patterns who is scamming who.

It sounds like you are referring to openbazaars model of arbitration where these people develop a reputation and are agreed upon by both parties. As you pointed out this becomes a little more difficult to do, im not entirely sure what OB has in mind but yes there is a risk an arbiter could be LE, the only risk however is if as proof the vendor provides the arbiter your tracking number, which the LE could look up to find your info. In this case, and hopefully in the near future, the use of tracking will be phased out as its not an intelligent thing to have with a drug package in the first place.

Rating an arbiter is even tricker, who rates them:? This would be a good question for OB devs.

OB planned to have both parties agree from a list of arbiters, mainly the vendor would have a list of preferred arbiters and then the buyer could select from one of those. Collusion is always a problem, but then again its all reputation based, how many vendors and arbiters are going to trash their reputation just to scam a few customers? The biggest scams vendors pull is not the selective scam as it tends to scare away customers, its the exit scam, build trust, demand FE, run.


[1 Points] ThrowawayTehGay:

I think community arbiters could work great, and these type of services already exist for legal bitcoin transactions. Take a look at bitraded.com as an example. In fact, arbiters existed before bitcoin was a twinkle in Satoshi's eye. Here's a thought experiment to illustrate how this could work.

Let's assume that all of the markets are gone and they're not coming back, and we're left with nothing but forums again. I'm a buyer and I want to pick up a zip of something stanky, so I scroll through the advertisements until I find a vendor with the good shit. I place an order with this vendor, he creates a multi-sig wallet, and signs it with his public key. Now I need to find an arbiter to sign the wallet as well. I scroll through the forums until I find a trusted member of the community in the list of volunteer arbiters. Ideally, this is someone who has arbitrated multiple disputes with multiple vendors. Maybe it's an admin or just a vent. Maybe she charges a fee or maybe does it for free. Either way, this person agrees to be an arbiter for our transaction and provides her public key for the multi-sig wallet.

Once the wallet is signed by everyone, I deposit my funds and wait for the pack to ship. If it never ships or never gets here, then I go to the arbiter and explain what happened. They listen to my story and the vendor's story. They take both of our information into account, along with our mutual histories in the forum/community, and decide to release all, some, or none of the coins to the vendor or to the buyer.

This is the exact same process that you're relying on the markets to do for you. Rather that put your trust in a known member of the community, you're putting your trust in an anonymous admin. If you don't like her decision, you have no more recourse than you would if a community arbiter ruled in your favor. Here are some answers to your direct questions.

  1. There's no need to sacrifice your privacy. It's not like you have to tell them your name or give them the private keys to your bitcoin wallet.

  2. This would be a waste of LE time because you would never know when you would actually be called on to help resolve a dispute and there's no guarentee that any personal information would be passed. This question could easily be rephrased as "how do you prevent LE from becoming vendors and seeing things that would incriminate people?"

  3. This is a good question but consider the existing marketplaces. How do you rate a marketplace? How do you stop a market admin from just choosing a side at random to give the money to so they get paid faster. Furthermore, can you ever really PROVE that a package was sent or that a package was received? Senders have tracking info but buyers have nothing but their word. As a buyer, you will almost always be the prime suspect in a dispute.

  4. Potential arbiters would be chosen by the community itself. This very sub could easily have a "Community Arbiter List" right below the Marketplace List. You put enough trust in the admins of the sub to provide correct links to legit markets, so it's not hard to imagine people trusting them to provide a list of legit arbiters.

At the end of the day, we put a LOT of trust in strangers to get drugs delivered to our door. We trust that the market won't run off with our funds before the drugs ship. We trust that the vendor will actually ship the drugs in the amount and quality that you ordered. We trust that if the package doesn't arrive then the vendor will do the right thing, or that the market will make them. We also trust that neither the vendor or the market are controlled by LE, and that they won't do anything shady with our name and address once they have it. Even on the street at some point on some level you have to place some small in trust in someone. After all, your dealer on the street could just take your money and shoot you in the face.