Silk Road forums

Support => Feature requests => Topic started by: SpaceCadet90457 on May 31, 2012, 06:33 pm

Title: to FE or not to FE? (why is it the only quesiton?)
Post by: SpaceCadet90457 on May 31, 2012, 06:33 pm

Why should this be so absolute?  No matter what scammers will be around and find loopholes, both vendors and buyers.  And you can never protect people from themselves.  I propose to give us 1 more option at check out.  A direct payment option that would bypass escrow, but be used in conjunction with an escrow payment. 

for example.  When doing business IRL, and I need a product that a business doesn't carry regularly and requires them to make a special order.  That business will require me to place a deposit.  That deposit is usually negotiable.  Let's just assume it is 50%.  Then when that product arrives I will pay that business the remaining 50%.   

I suggest adding another option, per line item, that will allow us to choose the % we would like to pay directly and not be escrowed.  This could be formatted similar to the postage option, a drop down box with different percentages, but no more than 50%, that will be directly paid to the vendor. Like the postage option this would be set by the vendor.   The remaining amount will be held in escrow and released upon arrival. 

Now the catch, resolutions. 

Just like IRL if the vendor requires the direct payment option and the order is disputed then the vendor releases any claim they would have had to the escrow, . 

If the buyer is scamming and states they didn't recieve when in fact they did, then the vendor is not out 100%,  They still retain the direct payment. 
Title: Re: to FE or not to FE? (why is it the only quesiton?)
Post by: maxhavelaar on November 25, 2012, 09:36 am

Yes precisely! why cannot beforehand buyer and seller agree on such a simple thing as a percentage refund in case of a missing parcel. The vendor has his feedback where people have the freedom to say and rate how and what they want. SR is never mediating there AFAIK. If i could beforehand say that 40% refund is the maximum i can do, then the customer can take a decided risk, there is no labour-intensive process of a moderator stepping in necessery. When you buy a business you don't put you're money in escrow either, you put your money in escrow, the refund is generally 10% if you don't take the business but in the contract you define what the conditions are and under what circumstances these conditions start to have actual effect on the takeover. Now a drug deal is not taking over a business, but just putting your money in Escrow and then when there is trouble, then when the package is lost and the situation gets a little annoying, starting to negotiate on how high the refund should be? I mean its simple, it could be a transactional pseudo language, like bitcoin script...


ESCROW REFUND RATE 40% OF SALE PRICE IN CASE OF CLAIM OF PACKAGE NOT RECEIVED WITHIN TIMEFRAME OF 4 WEEKS.


And you could add.


IF ACCORDING TO SILKROAD RECORDS, MY REFUNDS EXCEED MY TURNOVER BY xx %, BUYER WILL HAVE CONSIDERATION FOR THIS SITUATION AND ESCROW WILL BE LOWERED DUE TO A COMMITMENT TO SHARE SOME OF THE BAD LUCK.


What is wrong with saying look, i've had a bad month, you either can suspect me of scamming, but if you see scammers everywhere, i don't know what you're doing here... I find most customers really courteous and considerate. My survival is also their supply, the system of this kind of scripted escrow can already be implemented by using bitcoin alone (you need a newer bitcoin client to be able to run the scripts), but multisignature scripts basically pull the whole escrow system into the blockchain. Currently there is some provision for contracts that default after a timeout. These contracts can also be set up more complicated and for instance be triggered by outside programs/conditions/scripts that partie sagree upon to use beforehand. Keeping it inside of bitcoin also relieves a private party of escrow, perhaps making it possible to be selected for escrow duty through the bitcoin client where two parties make their case and you have to step in together with two other distributed escrow participants. Hear both arguments, described in an email and hearing the arguments voting for one solution or the other with three people you do not know their escrow market identity of. Basically 3 people can make certain that, if the userbase is big enough, the resolution will be serious, quick and fairer than if one person would be mediating.


This 'escrow duty' could be assigned at random, and could also provide benefits as for instance partial payment of a perecentage, as certain more experienced users are more capable of  mediating than others.


If somebody remains unreasonable towards the person, there can also be some form of sanction, all organized by a system which provides these services in the community of participants by committing to actually returning the favour, or for instance paying a sum of money to compensate the person that does have to take over your obligation towards the community.


This will put people in the seat where they can decide, and this often a good experience because it allows you to see the other side of things. It's democratic, it could be decentralized, based on a bitcoin-qt type of client with bitcoin built in, but also an interface to the protocol that several servers  provide in setting up the infratstructure for the rare occasion that the escrow contract condtions and terms are open for interpretation, or there is the suspicion of foul play on one or both sides.


The great thing about this is that instead of needing lawyers, and a court system to interpret written agreements against a huge corpus of law, case law and literature, the language of these contracts is written in a transactional limited language that requires you to understand basic math principles as in limiting risk easily by limiting maximum escrow refunds.


I approach this from the standpoint that the vendor sends out the orders, no exceptions. I've had problems but when people don't do this, this is of course a more fundamental problem. Ultimately in low trust situations, a resolution is even harder to find as both parties are not in it for what they say they are in for.


I'm considering making a picture of the ready envelope of your shipment, encrypting that with your public PGP key and sending it to you. So you can see i went through the hassle of making an envelope and labels and fake posttamps so that i can scam you. You see, that kind of thing bothers scammers, its work, scammers are lazy, work can scare them. I already put countless hours into this and other related projects, and i don't mind it. Setting up a good photocam to do this in such a way that the photos are not stored, but immediately encrypted and sent to the only person that can unpack them, the recepient. Perhaps even better, make a picture and encrypt it and put it in a central server vault that will produce it if the package does not arrive.


Not any more dangerous than tracking shipments when privacy is concerned, if done well, and if people fake TCN tracknig numbers, well... Also by making the address unreadable other buyers can vouch for the authenticity of this envelope by anonymously communicating that they've indeed received such envelopes consistently.


Basically my point is this is as one person describes it crypto-anarchism, but we're relying on a few people that have their hands full with the technical infrastructure alone. Lets leverage community, it will be beneficial on so many levels, and i think the best weapon against the scammers is to work together, to expose them and at least stop them in their tracks, make them feel its not worth their while and put them out of business for a while.


But this might go above and beyond an anonymous marketplace as its defacto a very technical judiciary for the disputes inside the community. Not a bad situation, because somebody who feels that they've been wronged by whoever in this community is perhaps not going to come back, or worse, will have a fucl it attitude as well. Not few scammers started out nice as well but for some it's perhaps the only way or they've been wronged themselves. Whatever the motivation is, institutionalizing the 'legit' buyers and sellers in a form of democratic system of regulating behaviour and seeing what will come of this exciting new invisible world of hours when we start to organize it differently.