Remove the incentive for 7000 bondless bots, among only 40 bonded makers

[seamo1]

I'd like to start/restart the discussion on fully disincentivizing bondless bots.
We have about 40 honest bonded makers in the orderbook. Everything else (7 thousand bots) is either spying, trying to game the selection algorithm or DOSing, effectively Sybil attacking JM, bringing it to a halt.

I believe these thousands of bots had caused our good will with IRC Operators to run out; and we got kicked off all three IRC servers, sadly suffering further centralization. Directory Nodes are needlessly being stressed too, and they are not forever. JM seems to be at a breaking point -- I have not seen successful coinjoins in a while.
Fidelity Bonds are 6 years old. In the initial introduction stage, when they were first created; it made sense to allow some non-bonded makers to be selected by default. Fidelity Bonds were new, untested, scary (potential loss of coin for makers). It made sense for some makers to continue running without Fidelity Bonds for a while.
Now, six years later, bond creation is easy, safe & secure and every honest maker does it.
I would like to suggest to drop the default to 0% in all taker clients.
If an entity wants to be a maker temporarily (the reason for the initial 12.5% default) -- it is quite easy & safe to set up a short duration bond, of a month or two.
Going to 0% bondless default will stop the endless flood of bots, ease up Directory Nodes operations, and allow JM to be fully functional once again.

the corresponding pull request: #1792

[lawlygagger]

Going to 0% bondless default will stop the endless flood of bots, ease up Directory Nodes operations, and allow JM to be fully functional once again.

I'm just a user, but I see this is as necessary change and will only benefit every honest participant. Keeping it as, with 1000s of bondless makers, will only get worse i fear.

[cookcut]

Agreed, I had posted as well earlier on this issue and it looks like it has only gotten worse. When I was looking at the orderbook a few months back it was something like 2-3000 makers, which was already bad. This is just unworkable now and I agree we should go to fully bonded makers to block out what is clearly (to me) a coordinated attempt to break JM.

The impact to IRC is important as well. We don't want to be perceived as spam.

[seamo1]

In the meantime, as a taker, find this line in your joinmarket.cfg line and set it to 0

bondless_makers_allowance = 0

[theborakompanioni]

cACK

[overcoin]

So, now it doesn't matter how often you change your Tor identity and JM nick. You're easily traceable because your fidelity bond is one and the same and is easily traceable!

[DarKOrange75]

I'd like to start/restart the discussion on fully disincentivizing bondless bots. We have about 40 honest bonded makers in the orderbook. Everything else (7 thousand bots) is either spying, trying to game the selection algorithm or DOSing, effectively Sybil attacking JM, bringing it to a halt. I believe these thousands of bots had caused our good will with IRC Operators to run out; and we got kicked off all three IRC servers, sadly suffering further centralization. Directory Nodes are needlessly being stressed too, and they are not forever. JM seems to be at a breaking point -- I have not seen successful coinjoins in a while. Fidelity Bonds are 6 years old. In the initial introduction stage, when they were first created; it made sense to allow some non-bonded makers to be selected by default. Fidelity Bonds were new, untested, scary (potential loss of coin for makers). It made sense for some makers to continue running without Fidelity Bonds for a while. Now, six years later, bond creation is easy, safe & secure and every honest maker does it. I would like to suggest to drop the default to 0% in all taker clients. If an entity wants to be a maker temporarily (the reason for the initial 12.5% default) -- it is quite easy & safe to set up a short duration bond, of a month or two. Going to 0% bondless default will stop the endless flood of bots, ease up Directory Nodes operations, and allow JM to be fully functional once again.

You forgot one category : Many honest bonded makers that can't get his bonds taken into account due to whatever bug in the software... I have a tried with multiple offers, made 2 bonds and my bond value in the offer sticks to 0!

[DarKOrange75]

I'd like to start/restart the discussion on fully disincentivizing bondless bots. We have about 40 honest bonded makers in the orderbook. Everything else (7 thousand bots) is either spying, trying to game the selection algorithm or DOSing, effectively Sybil attacking JM, bringing it to a halt. I believe these thousands of bots had caused our good will with IRC Operators to run out; and we got kicked off all three IRC servers, sadly suffering further centralization. Directory Nodes are needlessly being stressed too, and they are not forever. JM seems to be at a breaking point -- I have not seen successful coinjoins in a while. Fidelity Bonds are 6 years old. In the initial introduction stage, when they were first created; it made sense to allow some non-bonded makers to be selected by default. Fidelity Bonds were new, untested, scary (potential loss of coin for makers). It made sense for some makers to continue running without Fidelity Bonds for a while. Now, six years later, bond creation is easy, safe & secure and every honest maker does it. I would like to suggest to drop the default to 0% in all taker clients. If an entity wants to be a maker temporarily (the reason for the initial 12.5% default) -- it is quite easy & safe to set up a short duration bond, of a month or two. Going to 0% bondless default will stop the endless flood of bots, ease up Directory Nodes operations, and allow JM to be fully functional once again.

You forgot the honest bonded makers that can't get their bonds taken into account due to whatever bug in the software... I have a tried with multiple offers, made 2 bonds and my bond value in the offer sticks to 0!

[seamo1]

You forgot one category : Many honest bonded makers that can't get his bonds taken into account due to whatever bug in the software... I have a tried with multiple offers, made 2 bonds and my bond value in the offer sticks to 0!

Sounds the website orderbook issue and/or obwatcher.py
The maker-to-taker P2P interface always presents the bond. No problem there.

[Silarous]

Unfortunately, fidelity bonds don't stop people from running multiple bots either. These are clearly multiple bonds ran by a single entity. They didn't even try to hide it...

[Silarous]

Here's multiple offers utilizing a single bond.

[whitslack]

Unfortunately, fidelity bonds don't stop people from running multiple bots either.

The original exponent in the bond value formula would have been a more effective disincentive against running multiple bots with multiple bonds, but it was watered down at some point. If I didn't know better, I might suspect a conspiracy to cripple the whole fidelity bond concept from its infancy.

[Silarous]

Added some further context here

#1773 (comment)