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what I hear from people is that they often end up trading with the same people multiple times on bisq and robosats, and when it's someone new showing up that is bad as that person might try to do something weird, but you can't prevent it because these apps make it impossible to rely on reputation whatsoever, so I built the opposite
I don't think it's a question of including more people, as I imagine there are very few liquidity providers in these platforms anyway, but I can't be sure of course
also we shouldn't omit the fact that bitcoin-smol encourages small amounts, which to me are a solution for reputation bootstrap.
if you have a criticism against barriers to entry and lack of liquidity because reputation is hard, that is the same criticism I have against vexl
and I'm trying to fix it by telling people that it is ok to trust strangers if identity is costly and starting small is ok
https://mmalmi.medium.com/learning-to-trust-strangers-167b652a654f
I hadn't read the malmi post. Thanks for sharing it.
identity is costly
This is interesting and I realized that I missed this part of your website:
Paid relays are one way to add that cost: they only accept posts from keys that paid them a fee, and a high one-time fee makes throwing a key away expensive. Offers you see on such relays come from keys that paid it. Free relays let in offers from keys that cost nothing to create, so weigh a history there accordingly.
If there is a way to force identity to be costly, I'm certainly much more interested. Do you have plans for this other than using paid nostr relays (perhaps that is enough, I'm not sure)?
I had a plan involving opentimestamping identities and requiring them to be old, but it is broken because one could timestamp thousands at once, so I wanted them to be timestamped in relation with others, but that just does the reputation game again, so I'm not sure it makes sense.
the other idea is to do fidelity bonds and their variations, like joinmarket used to.
but honestly I think the paid nostr.wine relay is pretty good, I'm just sad that I couldn't find any other relays that operate in a similar vein (single steep upfront fee)
what stops someone who feels frustrated with another person on bitcoin-smol trying to nuke their reputation?
how would you proceed to nuke someone's reputation? reputation is local, your nuking would only ever be seen by people who had transacted with you (or indirectly, according to a new feature still being worked on)
still, if you have garnered good reputation from lots of people a single person misreporting you should have little effect
I don't think I understand how this ends up better than things like Bisq and Robosats. If it is all about reputation, it seems it will always be doomed to have low liquidity. I don't imagine escrows got created for no reason: it's that if you want lots of liquidity, you need to include as many traders as possible -- but when you include as many traders as possible, you make it easier for scammers to show up.
Beyond that, what stops someone who feels frustrated with another person on bitcoin-smol trying to nuke their reputation?