Of course you can't be sure of that. How can you?
“know what they are doing” lol more like they know very little.
A statement about reality needs some way of being tested against reality.
Please someone explain to me the testing methodology that would result in anyone knowing where's the ID coming or what's actually being done w/ what they're selling under bazaar like selling scheme.

There's a version of this actually works better and the most optimal version I know.
I'm part of immigrant communities. I know people there change hands of accs like Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Amazon Flex whatever. However there the system is that the buyer and/or seller advertise their need, someone comes and makes direct arrangement. They use like revenue share of sorts, last I checked they were renting Uber for %15 of the revenue. If someone is malicious there, uses the account bad, doesn't pay their share, causes issues w/ law, they get complaint treads specifically warning the community not to share accs w/ them anymore.

When you have this community system, bad actors are marked fast and kicked out. When you strip the thing that makes these arrangements work, like the community checks and balances, and introduce a middle man "seller", buyer and seller are anonymous and aren't part of a community and there's no chance to ostracize them. Good luck w/ your coin toss and pray that the buyer is benevolent. No checks and balances = no way to know/make sure of anything...

Also these “know what they are doing” adults, let us look at the numbers they're agreeing to face the very real risk of somebody doing something shady in their name. When I asked about it to develop some understanding, I heard numbers ranging from $50 to $150, $250 tops for these kind of accs. Strip the seller markup, how much are they receiving for this risk? $150? Would you as a willing adult risk the sanctity of your identity for $150? I know for sure I wouldn't... There's reasonable guess here that these are people who need money and by the numbers, to me this looks less like "willing adults who know what they are doing" and more like "financially strained people playing roulette on their identity records for peanuts".

This's all not to mention the "sale" part of "KYC acc sales" is merely an illusion.
You can't actually reliably sell a KYC acc that is by design belong to you and you alone.
Realistically, this's an extended renting until the point the actual owner, mule potentially decides to rug you:
https://stasher.news/uploads/953
(Telegram not KYC, but same mechanism, whoever holds the recovery path holds the acc)

As long as seller can prove they're the person w/ KYC information that the acc is opened w/, they can rug nearly any acc under you. They can contact the institution, provide necessary documents to prove their identity, claim there's unauthorized access to the account. This didn't work in the article, but mostly should work. You have 0 recourse.

Let us look the shape of this "TraderJoe"

Came out of nowhere, oddly and supposedly knows too much about the conversations going on as a new face around... "People call you a rat because you keep doing this", nobody in this thread called me a rat, and "keep" means he's been watching me for a while. Acc created to make that comment, half of his comment is a poor attempt at discrediting me, character assassinations of sort just to dispel the discussion and concerns around the topic, other half is cherry picking fallacy just to make it look like it's all sunshine and rainbows. A rather deceptive way to depict things. Let us not forget the tone that he was trying to slay evil Reaver who is trying to desecrate the parallel economy, even though I said I'm asking a question about what's going on behind there, and nowhere in my post I said I'm against people buying/sharing accs to overcome the system. This's textbook strawman, I asked a question, listed stolen, fabricated AND mules, ended w/ "Or is there?", he turned it into "pure victimization or pure theft" and "these poor mules", words I never wrote. I moved mountains of money in and out of Monero near fully nonKYC, my man comes attacking me w/ "you've never had to deal with any real shit in your fucking life." Can't be bothered to check who they are talking with.

Personally I judge potential validity of statements based on the actual analytical rigor there's or lack thereof. A non insignificant part of this guy did is flinging his poo around w/ nothing backing him up. Guy doesn't even understand the question, his whole Uber example, there's 0 Uber, Lyft, Doordash type acc saled on bazaar. He defended a thing bazaar doesn't sell, didn't bother to look what's on there before explaining everyone how it works. Funny part is he does the exact thing he accuses me of, "sneak in" moralizing to play on feelings, only his plays on everyone's love for the parallel economy and sits on a false premise. And one sided "depiction" of events conveniently align w/ his ideology or potentially agenda. I'm failing to see reason to trust on their statement alone, given how false the verifiable part of the comment is, that casts a doubt over the validity of the unverifiable parts of their claims.

IDK but this smells much more like an alt acc of one of them platform acc sellers trying to disrupt the conversation to protect their bottom line vs. this hero saving the parallel economy acc sales, when you weight the evidence at hand...

I might be off on some stuff and I'd be happy to hear where I'm wrong here, however not by some personal attacks but w/ actual logic/reason/evidence and ounce of actual analytical rigor.

@AilliA I didn’t mean you catastrophize the Clanker problem overall. I meant you’re jumping to the conclusion that Stasher would turn into Clankpocalypse the moment there’s even a bit of anonymization, slippery slope.

Arkfile should've put more thought into how to run that contest and instead of trying to run a covert advertisement for the Arkfile itself in guise of FCMP++ contest, put that $50 in use for fixing that bastard child of 90s factory SCADA and Claude design slop UI, looool.

You know what's curious, why does this concern leave your body when the topic is bazaar?
So far we had:

• Clankers DMing people w/ slopcore "services", around until I neutered one it seems.
• Clankers spreading forum w/ "engagement" that's nothing but low hanging fruit angles stated in most generic/robotic ways that you can smell from mile away.
• Clankers spreading artifacts around both on listings and forum making it so obvious they're trying to test the site for some vulnerability, or in very least (less likely but) they're trying to troll the site?

Where're any policies about this, where're guardrails, where're discussions about how to contain and label it or something?
Where's your firey advocacy when they're doing these on the site YOU ARE INVOLVED WITH?
Clean your own backyard first?
Why aren't you ringing the bells about this THERE as well, if you're so concerned about it?
Do they not deserve your protection from the impending Clankpocalypse, there?

From outside it looks like you're working w/ a "challenging" team, which's unfortunate. And I'm only saying "challenging" here as a form of sarcasm. I'm sure there're more appropriate words for this, lol. And from what you're reporting it sounds like you have limited capacity to drive change due to "challenges" lol.

Would you like to pitch in or keep pleading the 5th on this? Maybe I'm failing to understand something about your stance, or you're not telling things. Please, enlighten us!

@stasher as you please. You know how large platforms always use much more complicated mechanisms that can scale like crazy bc there's little to no way of hand adjusting things at that scale, I felt like we're leaving useful complexity on the table that can be utilized otherwise.

My intentions are more reflected like keeping those average rates closer to what people actually tip, and I understand calculations don't mean people will get a reward like their pension at exact multipliers. And at least my approach is making it less multiplier bonus and more just a bit icing on top just to keep incentives not to distort behaviors. That's just based on my thinking and experience and seeing how people game/cheat the system, try to tear each other up on traditional social media, and bot spams when the carrot starts to look a tad too shiny. I see you're more aligned w/ 1.5x, so be it. To dispel any misunderstandings I'm not saying this or that multiplier is right and this is wrong, they come w/ different tradeoffs.

I understand that I'm like this crazy person who is putting disproportionate amount of time and effort into writing these things. For me, it takes a rather long time to write these long ass stuff. When you factor in the thinking time, so long actually I neither know nor like to share how long it can take for me to write something like this haha. When I wrote the initial again long ass feedback, and saw that it somehow came off as pointing fingers to Aillia I was stressed and sad and took a nigh walk and I was thinking how to approach/explain things, both on the curve and just explaining I'm talking about general shape of human behavior. So I usually go around thinking about these things in bits and pieces form in my mind, then I write it, then if the topic is sensitive and I'm already misunderstood I leave the tab and go back and fort and read and replace some parts, adjust the tone so it doesn't come off as pointed as before, but I still got to preserve the meaning as I'm not willing to remove the actual thing I'm saying just to try to pad people either. End result has little to no way of not looking rather polished, perhaps too polished for social media. The formula that got more complex and dynamic is surely me going back and forth w/ the model and rather than doing a half assed job at 3am trying to explain it simply I gave the model summary. I'm the orchestrator of the model, I'm the one who has the idea of a base rate and earned bonus, I have the behavioral specifications. Also I didn't have energy and will to go back to my own writing again just to extract the names of the behavioral science/psychology terms that I myself put there in the writing in the first place in my own writing. I fed my initial post and asked for terms bullet summary, a rather mechanical process with mechanical result regardless if I did the summary or model. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned: I offloaded these two mechanical parts to the model. Besides these two technical sections, the whole thing is my own words :) It sure comes off a bit colder than if I had written these sections too w/ my own messy thinking and writing, I don't think I could've explained the model as well which already got rather (relatively) complex. I think these two sections were reasonable compromises in organicness of the writing considering I have time and energy limitations as well. That said I do incorporate feedback in what people prefer to see/read.

As someone who's so into language and writing it's a fascinating topic. I've had access to these models long before anyone from public knew what even an LLM is. And I'm too having a lot of doubts if the thing I'm reading is human or machine, and the lines are blurring more and more. I read your database probing summary, most likely you didn't probe by hand and fed it to the model, the summary felt a bit like model summary w/ your own wording in between, but I'm not really sure. Even under this post, there are some replies either w/ idea or expression so generic, I have the great feeling that they might be near pure LLM, from people who seem to want to give the impression that it's their own wet brain writing, not sure, perhaps it's really their own writing and they may take offense if I point out, lol, IDK. Maybe I'm going through the LLM detection paranoia. I'm not saying I take offense personally though. The sections I offloaded to LLM were rather apparent, maybe rest of my reply, more vague and looking uncertain on who actually wrote it.

@AilliA making my case for me yet again! There’s elements of the humanness and the specific human that are heavily factored into it, which in turn means the result is heavily skewed towards who wrote it and not necessarily the pure merits of the writing. I think your strong aversion to hiding names tells me that.

I hear and feel your concern and I think it would be very sad if things were to be arrange around here to remove the human element altogether. All the proposed solutions are only time limited and optional thus far from what I can read.

However the way you're describing the what comes next involves many chains of steps you seem to take granted, the (time limited and optional) hiding event causes the erasure of the humanity on the site causes the bot swarm causes it all becoming virtually indistinguishable from some LLM dystopia. That's lots of steps between those w/ their own individual chances of happening or not that you can't take it as statistical certainty and catastrophize all the small ideas of tweaking things. It feels like a form of slippery slope fallacy to me. Though I'm so glad now I have a chance to plug one of my favorite characters here I use as Twitter image, the Demon of Reason talking about it:
https://youtu.be/Qt4f7QrfRRc original ↗

The whole Demon of Reason 6 short series is very fun:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJicmE8fK0EiNXHZ2TeAhByFJywce31S-

That said even if I don't necessarily agree w/ definitive catastrophization of it all, elements of the underlying bot issue are valid and something I've been thinking and as you know talking about as well. I did suggest the rule of making bot accs explicitly declare it over on Bazaar and have it on their profile as a badge or something so people know what they're dealing with and if they'd rather not engage w/ them, they'd have option to do so. I do feel strongly about this approach. Thoughts?

I don't want to come and talk w/ clankers here, on Twitter I mute people when I get the definitive hint (well sometimes not so definitive haha) that they're pushing the generic bot slop. I'd much rather come discuss/argue w/ Aliena chan and some other messy humans. I don't think anybody would like/want/allow the platform to turn into bot farm.

@stasher thnx for checking so quick! I'm game for different experimentations to see how it turns out.

On if things gets skewed, we don’t need to know anyone’s intent for it. There's some literature in the field. In a randomized experiment at the WSDM 2017 conference (Tomkins, Zhang & Heavlin), reviewers who could see author names scored papers from famous authors and top institutions higher than reviewers who couldn’t. Those were experts trying to be fair. Familiar names get a boost by default, and an 80 vs 170 minute gap to first tip is consistent w/ that. I mean there's not like an off switch for that, and I agree we don't need to uproot the platform to try to alter it. And surely no easy way to know in individual level, just general patterns. My reason of telling that was more like "humans are observed to be working like this" and not some plea for grand intervention to "fix" it. But to see if there're mechanisms we can consider to route around it in some shape or form. I’d like this place shaped around genuine human curiosity and connection, not psychological hooks, if we can.

Actually I was thinking about an optional feature to the platform, a setting that turns the whole site anonymous for the logged in user. You mentioned there are caveats and this wouldn't work perfectly due to writing prose etc. That's very true. But we can potentially have our lil fun experiment, implement the feature, those who are interested can join the challenge, and we can gather in a month to discuss our biases (or lack thereof if people so claim). That might be a fun thread! Who knows, maybe some of us would prefer to stick w/ this rare kind of anonymous platform experience?

Glad the drawdown landed. I just cooked that up not knowing how it would land. But seeing how it landed I think we might keep considering alternatives, especially ones that have more flexibility in terms of adjusting themselves on the fly, so we don’t have to rely on growth assumptions and models to set the rate. Here’s another one I was thinking about:
------------

A self adjusting version: raises have to be earned (concept)

Building on the drawdown limit, here's a version that adjusts itself to how the site actually does, instead of committing to 1.5x up front.

I4, T4  = 4 week averages (income = recurring fees only)
limit   = (I4 + reserve ÷ 13) ÷ 1.1      spending limit, stays as the safety cap
earned  = (I4 + reserve ÷ 52) ÷ T4       payback the site could afford spread over a year
target  = min(earned kept between 1.2 and 1.5, limit ÷ T4)
P       = last week's P, moved toward target: up 0.01 max, down 0.03 max per week
budget  = min(P × T4, limit)

How it works
Payback starts at 1.2x. It only rises when income can actually back it over a year, and it rises slowly. If things slow down, it eases back, capped at 0.03 a week. The 13 week limit stays as the safety net, so the pool never empties.

Why it's better (in some ways)
I ran it against the current spec and a flat 1.2x across five scenarios. Growth uses tips +3.5% and income +11% a month, the middle of your chart's ranges.

It matches the best result in every scenario: conservative when the site is flat, 1.5x when growth is real, and it doesn't get fooled by a launch spike. That last one matters most. A hype spike then a plateau is a common pattern for new sites, and a formula that chases the spike to 1.5x has to take it back later.

The psychology

• No anchor it can't keep. The rate only goes up when income backs it, so nobody gets used to a number that has to be taken away later.
• Slow up, capped down. Raises hold for weeks before building on each other, so they read as reliable. Drops are small enough that people adjust w/ them instead of feeling a loss.
• Nobody has to bet on a forecast. If the site grows, it pays 1.5x. If it doesn't, it stays conservative. The data decides!

Caveats
Simple model w/ inputs read off your chart, and tips don't react to payback in it. The constants (52, 0.01, 0.03, 1.2, 1.5) are judgment calls, not tuned. Might worth rerunning on the site's real tip and income history before adopting.
----------

@AilliA kind of you to come back to crime scene and turn yourself in, willingly :P /s
Thnx for voicing your agreement but I was largely referring to human behavior.

I understand it may somehow come off like pointing fingers or something, but I was just largely describing how humans work, the messy way, you yourself also pointed out.

What I wrote, through that lens:

• Shooting first at certain names: halo effect, a good impression of the person spills over onto whatever they post. Add mere exposure: the more familiar a name, the more we like what's attached to it.
• Snowballing, name accs: Matthew effect. Early leads compound, and the visible get more visible.
• Early tips cause the outcome: herding. People follow what's already been tipped, which is what the Muchnik study measured and why hiding totals early (potentially) helps.
• “Further from the actual truth”: Goodhart’s law, when a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure. Tips are supposed to show quality, but once tipping pays, people tip what they bet will be popular, so tip totals drift from measuring quality to measuring bets.
• "Your posts are a safe bet," the prediction market: overjustification effect. Pay people for something and their reason for doing it shifts from caring about it to the payout.
• Anonymous bounty threads: blind evaluation, same reason peer review and auditions hide names. Take the name away and only the content is left to judge.
• Accounts that (potentially) keep tipping each other first: reciprocity. People return favors, often w/o thinking about it.
• The cliff: people judge rewards against what they've been getting, not against zero, and losses hit about twice as hard as gains. A slow glide gets absorbed as the new normal. Seeing the edge coming invites a bank run: grab your share before it's gone.
• Designing for the flat case: plans tend to lean optimistic (planning fallacy), so the safer design assumes no growth. I know I'm not getting popular w/ conservative forecasts, lol.
• Paying creators more: what gets rewarded gets repeated. Reward writing, get more writing.
• "I engage more w/ threads certain people interact with": that's me doing it too. Social proof, we use who's engaging as a shortcut for what's worth our attention.

And you described a few of these yourself, which is kind of my point. Recognizing almost everyone who comments on your posts is familiarity at work, and a small site seeded by early personal networks is how the Matthew effect gets its head start. Tipping posts right away because you'd already read them elsewhere or given your word is reciprocity and commitment: once we've promised something, we (hopefully) follow through. But the upvote then perhaps reflects the relationship and the promise, not the post as people see it here. And upvoting the documentary w/o watching on "human intuition" (I'll watch that documentary too ;), fast thinking, quick judgments from cues like who posted it or what it's about, and it's what the halo effect runs on. No confession needed :P

So I'd flip "more for bots" around. Bots don't have intuition, friendships or promises to keep. These effects exist because of them. Maybe it smooths out as Stasher grows, thought early leads have a way of compounding rather than wash out as well. Which is why I think it's worth getting the incentives right while it's small. None of this is a knock on anyone. It's how people work, me included (maybe a little less so), and that's why the fix belongs in the design, not in judging people. This's just us practicing platform design around human nature, there were no intentions of pathologizing things, let alone individuals themselves...

I know people at the evil companies of the world like Facebook and Google whose whole job is factoring in and designing around these things. They do it for rather perfidious purposes. We have the luxury of noble intentions here.

Saw the comment I referenced is gone. Whatever the reason, quoting it was me saying “Look, the mechanism I suspected is showing up out there!”, not a jab :) When you start to unpeel human nature, some uncomfortable questions surface. Do people tip what you write, or are they betting on you, a concern you raised yourself? How much is the writing and how much is a bit of fame and status? In a small circle where most people know each other, is it genuine appreciation or friends being friends? What’s honest and what’s social conditioning? These are the kind of questions people w/ various sizes of following wrestle with. As you put it, it’s messy human nature, maybe laid a bit too bare for comfort :)

I know we have our lil misunderstandings sometimes. If you have feedback/comments/claims and would like to discuss further, feel free to reach out <3

Couple of things I'd like to point out, a few of them I was already thinking of mentioning.

I’m seeing posts get tipped heavily within minutes of going up, including long posts that need actual reading and digesting. Not naming names, and IDK which of two things is going on: people self tipping to snowball themselves, or the incentive distorting behavior so when people see certain names they shoot first (with their Monero) and ask questions later. This behavioral distortion is a problem, and it's taking us further from the actual truth, actual truth of what's actually quality content. Some timing analysis could potentially shed light on it: time from post to tip vs. how long the post takes to read, and whether the same accounts keep tipping the same authors first? IDK how to catch or fix it, just laying it out there.

Early tips also don’t just predict the outcome, they cause it. Muchnik, Aral & Taylor (Science, 2013) ran a randomized experiment on a social news site: one fake upvote made positive ratings 32% more likely and raised final scores 25% on average. So paying for being early on popular posts pays people for creating the popularity they get credit for spotting. The 1.5x makes that more profitable?

We don't need to trust my theories alone, just read what's being written under this post
""your posts are a safe bet” xD"
People themselves admit they're taking bets like it's some prediction market, not necessarily evaluating what's being written? Do we want a system where people are taking bets to get the most bucks? Idea is gently nudging people to act, not turning them into gamblers. I fail to see much truth seeking happening there...

This might be an indicator that the incentive offered is too much, enough that it's distorting behavior heavily. We have great multipliers on amounts going on here vs. the Stacker news, that's another long topic I'm just mentioning here I'm not so sure about. This might be indication that 0.6 XMR isn't necessarily the optimal weekly payout and/or as others pointed out the weight of it in the payout vs. the posters of the content is too high. And idea of not necessarily having the pool amount public?

Am I the only one seeing this happening in practice?
Sometimes I see a new thread, open to read, some casual comment made by a name acc got showered w/ tips, on the other corner of the room a very well thought out comment/argument is sitting like:

https://stasher.news/uploads/898

IDK the definitive solution to such thing when the nature of the platform is people having accs attached to everything that's written here. But I'd like to suggest consideration of ability to wall off certain threads w/ anonymity, for example ones that offer bounty w/ anonymous commenting. This's one way to prevent people rushing to upvote certain names, in another sense that's also a technique for separating the value of what's being offered from who says it, making it more accurate and fair for whoever actually has the best answer/reply/content for the bounty of that thread itself, rather than people flocking to upvote certain names, for the sake of their name, and to win the prediction market of "who'll get the most upvotes?"

Some ideas

• Hide tip totals on new posts for the first/x hour so early tips can’t herd later ones
• No early credit for tips that land faster than the post could reasonably be read
• Diminishing curator credit for repeatedly tipping the same author first
• Discount pairs of accounts that keep tipping each other first

Optimizing the curator payout curve

It looks like in the sim, when the pool runs low, payouts drop to income only, from ~0.25 to under 0.1 XMR a week in a few weeks. That’s the sharp drop around June ‘27 in the base sim, right where the chart says “Pool runs low: income only.” Payback goes from 1.25x to roughly half of what you tipped. Tipping flips from making money to losing money. The sim keeps tips flat after that, but once payouts fall below the tip line, that might change the psychology of tipping for people. And if people see the edge coming, they might tip more to grab a bigger share before it’s gone, and since the budget follows tips, that drains the reserve faster? The growth scenario shows a gentle(~er) glide, but the cliff shows up when activity stays flat, and for a young site that’s the more likely case? Conservative case based design is wiser planning, I think.

IMO the thing to optimize for is staying above the tip curve as long as possible and avoiding sharp drops like that one. Start slowing down earlier so payouts glide down to income instead of dropping onto it. People judge rewards against what they’ve been getting, not against zero. A slow glide gets absorbed as the new normal. A sharp drop might registers as a loss, and losses hit about twice as hard as gains of the same size. Break even is also a line people feel: above it, tipping pays for itself, and below it, every tip feels like a cost. Cross that line suddenly and tipping psychology gets altered. The longer you can glide that section above the tip curve, the better we can potentially preserve tipping psychology. So that sharp drop isn’t very ideal from a behavioral perspective.

One of the alternatives towards optimizing that curve:
Swap budget = min(pool, m × T4) for budget = min(m × T4, I4 + reserve ÷ 13), where I4 is the 4 week average of recurring income. Each week it can spend income plus 1/13 of what’s left in reserve, so the reserve shrinks but never hits a wall, and payouts slide down to income instead of dropping onto it. That also replaces the runway and m easing lines. Pair it w/ a flat m around 1.2. In a flat activity run (tips 0.15, income 0.07, 6 XMR) that stays above the tip line ~46 weeks vs ~40, and slides down over ~4 months instead of in one week. Of course I claim not I'm a magician, no formula keeps payouts above the tip line forever while income is below tips, so the goal is staying above it as long as possible and making the crossing a slope, not a cliff.

This's just some alternative. I'd be happy to see a better designed curve from others!
Not claiming it’s optimal. I ran a quick flat activity model (tips 0.15, income 0.07, 6 XMR, read off your chart) w/ your formula and a drawdown version, and compared two things: weeks the payout stays above the tip line, and how long the slide is once it crosses. Drawdown w/ m 1.2, W 13 came out ahead on both. Spending a fixed share of the reserve each week is the same idea endowments use so the money doesn’t run out on a date.

ALSO

I agree that @Mongoose made god points there. I think people who actually take their time to write things are the actual lifeblood of the platform. W/o them, curation can't exist and useless. I think "The incentive to post and create good original content is receiving uptips." is fair but it's a bit discounting where the actual value generation happens. And given that we have indications that tipping is already turning into a horse race, I don't feel problems in skewing the rewards towards actual value generating engines of the platform. That can be one bird two stone, increasing value of actually writing stuff, and lowering gambling of upvoting stuff.

Also I have reservations about picking the top N people and distributing it to them only instead of spreading out to everyone more. But that aspect of things I know not much about so I don't have established opinions on that one.

Sorry if this turned into a bit of a tangent about upvotes and behavioral stuff, but I think it's a very relevant angle that I'm interested in exploring. I also don't have any problem(s) with the platform's popular kids. I mostly use these platforms through the lens of other people, and I find myself engaging more with threads that certain people interact with. I'm trying to say I'm not discounting the value creation on curation side.

I'd be happy to know if people think I'm accurately describing the situation, overblowing the effects, or have too cynical a view of human nature haha.

Kawaii Crypto had the idea for this one, I made it thought.

Can we submit more than one?

Okay, apparently in this community I have to, each and every time, emphasize my own stance and prove that I'm no FED, and only later make some arguments that might be against my own ideas and values. Otherwise everyone will incessantly confuse the two and, no matter how many times I try to correct them, will make the false claim that my arguments=what I want/think. IDK what I can actually do to stop this oversimplificationmaxxing.

I don't fully know how these are done behind the scenes either. Can somebody teach me whether these can actually be made en masse, as selling them requires, w/o unauthorized access to the private info of others? From what I've heard, the answer is overwhelmingly no: these come from stolen identities, fabricated ones, or recruited mules who end up holding the legal bag for whatever runs through them. There's little to no way to do these in bulk w/o actually harming others. Or is there?

I want to put additional emphasis on the fact that there's practically little to no actual difference between fully and transparently allowing them vs. the current covert allowance scheme. No one is dumb enough to look at these and believe they're assistance. No argument such as "but we had the rule and only assistance/service was allowed, they're all assistance/service" would hold in an actual enforcement scenario. The state can and will easily argue you looked the other way knowingly. There are countless examples of the state doing just that, using contextual and intentional clues to make arguments and enforce against you. And under the current scheme, prickly people will keep pointing out the dishonesty in public or private :)

As I said on the forum, "I have the feeling the platform is going through an identity crisis." DN lite on clearnet is a brand direction the platform is currently taking, which seems halfway viable thus far. But then IDK what differentiates the platform from others, considering these already exist in copious amounts just a Tor browser away anyway. IDK why the platform exists if it's not actually providing something actually new, an entirely different category of resistant XMR marketplace on clearnet. From a pure product perspective, to me the platform looks like it started as the "craigslist/ebay" of Monero but turned into the DN lite of Monero. To me the first vision is more interesting and unique; the latter one isn't producing anything original, adding so much value, or bringing change or disruption to actually anything. It's a half ass replication of a model that's known to be working just perfectly fine over Tor, but trying to do it in much harder territory. I'm 100% sure somebody will read this and use half assed reasoning to discover(!) my secret inner FED, as whenever I open this topic that's the result I receive, but my questions are more like "WTF do you actually want to be?" and "Is what you want to be a viable thing that won't get killed off down the line?"

Then there's the question: if these types of listings get stripped away, will there even be any appreciable traffic left on the platform? To answer this, unfortunately, we'll need answers to the detailed platform metrics questions I've been asking about for over a year. I have the feeling the result won't look amazing.

We also need to disabuse ourselves of the false notion that this is something entirely new being tried here. DN or DN lite concepts on clearnet have been tried plenty of times before, maybe not giftwrapped the same way or built around Monero directly, but the same idea of "making it work" on clearnet underneath. It always ends up w/ you getting stopped once/if you grow large enough and become visible. XMRBazaar apparently isn't at that stage yet. Here's a summary of how it ended for others, and the likely trajectory for XMRBazaar if/when it reaches a size that gets noticed from the outside:

• Backpage: clearnet classifieds where the adult section was officially escorts/companionship only. Staff "moderated" by stripping explicit words from ads instead of removing them, and that exact practice was later used as proof they knew. Seized in 2018, the CEO pleaded guilty, founder Michael Lacey got 5 years in 2024 w/ the judge telling him he knew about it and did nothing, and the CFO and EVP got 10 years each. This is the "only assistance/service was allowed" defense playing out in real life.
• Craigslist: the one that survived. It had an "erotic services" section, dropped adult services in 2010, and pulled US personals entirely in 2018 right after FOSTA passed rather than risk the rest of the site. It survived by cutting the problem sections, not by hiding them.
• Shiny Flakes: a German teen ran a slick drug shop on both clearnet and Tor, advertised openly, w/ offshore domains and servers in NL. Got caught partly by reusing the same parcel station near his home. 7 years in 2015, then he built another shop while still serving that sentence and got another 4.5 years in 2023.
• Samourai Wallet: not a marketplace, but it shows exactly how intent clues get used. Prosecutors leaned hard on how the founders marketed it, like pitching it on Dread for moving criminal proceeds. The founders got 5 and 4 years in 2025.
• On the "craigslist/ebay" side, OpenBazaar died w/o any raid, simply from not getting enough users to pay for its infra. LocalMonero wound down on its own in 2024 citing internal and external factors amid the privacy tool crackdown. So the first vision isn't risk free either, but the failure mode there is mostly running out of users.

My role in this discussion is laying things out as they are, like some sort of armchair philosopher or consultant. I'm not trying to stop anyone from doing whatever they want and seeing whether it works or not. That said, based on experience thus far, I fully expect some people who know nothing about brand positioning, product differentiation, product strategy, or regulatory risk to yet again read what I write and not get what I'm trying to say. Because screaming "FED among us" or whatever other half baked nonsense is cognitively far easier and less demanding than understanding nuance.

Capping it is much better strategy, psychologically.

If you don't cap it, you're turning into a sort of intermittent random reinforcement learning pattern, decoupling effort from reward, something you don't want people to associate with. This's partially similar to type of hook that makes things addicting like gambling. Which'll mean boom and bust cycles based on reward pool amount, something undesirable. And fucking bots. You don't want mercenary bots having inflow/outflow based on pool either. Bot spam may be disproportionately higher in higher reward weeks vs. the steady distribution scheme. That would increase overall bot spam volume. the $ is enough conscious or subconscious hook for people themselves as is, we don't need to mix in the high variability in it as well. These two alone are enough reason to keep it capped.

I'd argue this incentive type is also incompatible w/ keeping overall quality optimal and how humans engage on such platforms. People have natural engagement pattern of engaging and writing about topics and discussions they're interested in which's something that's naturally variable. This'll create a perverse incentive structure in weeks w/ yuge reward pool people will be more engaging comparative to their base rate even thought otherwise they potentially wouldn't based on their interests, hollowing out the actual quality of their engagement/writing, diluting the overall meaning on the platform. And in weeks w/ smaller reward pool, they might feel less incentive in engagement and put less effort than otherwise they would've. That's another mechanism that'll skew and steal away from overall quality and concentration of it. These things happen automagically in people's minds weather they think about it or not. I made the assumption that the idea here isn't trying to recreate hallow addictive behavior that other platforms try to do.

Setting the dials just enough so people are positively incentivized about money here w/o turning it into the main thing that totally shapes and distorts behavior instead of being driven by what's actually happening here that's news and discussions is a delicate balance.

I may go even further than this and put forward the suggestion of hiding the pool amount? Do we even want the pool to be this big thing in people's minds this much? Why? Are we sure that this's overall better strategy?

Operant conditioning and schedules of reinforcement are fundamental concepts in learning psychology, and in psychology overall. It is one of the first things that should immediately come to mind with a question like this.

If I cared that much about having things banned, or any other particular policy, and so sure I'm %100 right, you surely think I would've contacted Doug eons ago? :)

Our discussions w/ him would theoretically be dry. Also I remember your venting posts about how hard/frustrating it can potentially be on that front to drive change. That doesn't sound fun. I'd much rather pull Aliena chan into discussions!

You know how Socrates is famous for spending his days wandering the public spaces and markets (agora) of Athens, engaging anyone from politicians and scholars to craftsmen in conversation. Kind of that mindset. He too asked a lot of questions, lots of probing and hard ones. Discussion for Its Own Sake.

Also I'm not inflicted w/ the idea that every discussion/argument I make necessarily needs to change policy, I may argue for something opposite of what I believe depending on the situation. So, the usual "If he's arguing about this, that must be his belief" doesn't apply either.

...and Doug needs a rec for the next better for "law and order" admin, your name will be the first that comes to my mind :)

But do I get to fight w/ you all the time? That's like %80 of the fun for me and would be my mandatory requirement for such arrangement :P

> ...the guy whose service you used yourself

You "reason" on factually incorrect evidence. I have not purchased any acc neither from him nor from anyone else. I asked them how it works. You're calling me hypocrite based on false premise. I have the records. You have the records as well. How about find me that purchase or apologize? My argument was privacy, but yes business ethics as well but my argument was partially theoretical bc I purchased nothing :) Inquiring about something and doing the purchase are two different things if that matters to your "reasoning". I am a p2p trader myself, sharing DMs w/o permission for petty quarrel is treason in my book, I can only hope any half decent trader can agree. Ethics is a hard to find commodity these days. But I hold no grudges currently :) I think him of a lowlife for this for sure! I rarely have high expectations for people thought, lol. Privacy I hope you guys remember that the foundation of the community? Supposedly.

Yes you're wrong, lol. Also I might be a serial killer and also advocate for not having hitman for hire listings on the platform because it raises risk profile of the platform alone. There is no hypocrisy or contradiction here. One is my own personal life and belief, other is what I think is best for the platform. These two stem from different reasoning and logic, they need not to overlap. I like to think I am rather not bad in not confusing personal belief/ideology w/ business logic, something I recommend to you as well. Why did you remove Flock listings after making 4th amendment argument? (which was a rather poor attempt) I have the feeling you're having hard time making distinctions between these concepts?

I like and aim for order yes, and I believe in systems and rules, yes. And yes as platforms grow and mature that is the thing that scales. The hypocrisy I see here is you trying to feed me the marketing material you know to be BS yet for some reason you couldn't help yourself trying to feed me out of the platform. At that point I was no longer sure if you truly not understand how logic of it works or if you are high on your own supply? The bigger hypocrisy is the fascism running on the platform that you try to terrorize people for speaking about illegal listings you know exist, yet threatening them with banning if/when they speak of it if they can't provide %100 proof. Very pro freedom of speech of you I guess, in line with your values? Need I remind you it took mere hours for someone (Ashley Jones) to prove you wrong and you deleted the two listings she provided under illegal category? Funniest thing is guy called Nazi was victim of this, lol. Have you considered there might be better ways to maintain order than turning into something you sought to destroy? :P Do you even see the authoritarian trap you are falling into? I know that post you wrote but even w/o that post the ideological and realities of the situation clash on the platform is visible and looks hypocritical on occasions, yes.

Feel free to include more false accusations of hypocrisy based on factually incorrect evidence and reasoning if you please or if you want debunked. I am very pleased to see these surfacing :) I may have more in store for you as well...

All these might come off like I turned antagonistic on you or something. It's not. You are still one of my favorite people in the community. We all have headway to grow, me included. And I personally am not against KYC acc sales of any form unless it's harming someone. It was funny to see people calling me Fed just because I made a point related to platform's risk profile, unrelated to my personal beliefs. As I stated I believe the value of the ability of being able to seperate these two. You ameteur accusers needed not to make it elaborate, you should have used the grey area (kind of illegal tbh) nature of the p2p Monero trading I do myself. That's 10x better accusation than a kyc acc I did not purchase, lol.

Which guy?
I never even mentioned a name, and I don't have any personal problems w/ anyone on the platform, besides rude people and scammers I mean, I can't name one single person RN, and this's no way shape or form directed towards an individual. This's a very wrong reading that has no basis. And I'm highly confrontational, if I had a name, I would have no problems providing it :)

*SpaleRuby is the 2314657856345675th LLM bot that I reported that was going on over GitHub that was spamming replies w/ begging money in exchange of fixing low hanging fruit "bugs." Half of them were half assed LLM slop "improvement suggestions". These are in the folder I gave to you in great detail. Had you bothered to check the provided evidence perhaps you could've came to the same conclusion it was just spam on Monero repositories of all... What you saw in isolation is very recurring and routine pattern on a lot of platforms, including HN as you yourself pointed out. This's a routine cross platform intelligence sharing potentially about forming a concrete LLM policy. We already have another LLM bot what I would say "spamming" replies w/ "engagement" currently on forum. You may not think/see the need for concrete LLM policy on the platform, but I think there very much is such as potentially requiring LLM controlled accounts openly declaring it so people know what they're dealing with... I have nothing against LLMs let alone a single specific LLM, I already said this before...

Honestly I think the saddest part is that I'm going around taking lots of time to lay out missing pieces on the platform for improvement purposes, helping keep it clean but here I'm being accused of being vindictive that has nothing do to w/ it. I'm truly deeply sorry for somehow giving this impression that I don't think is my doing. This's just poor reading of what I'm writing, doing and intentions. Coming from you especially of all people is especially saddening :( You yourself pointed out the importance of not everything being about a circle jerk mere days ago... (then deleted and brought back again)

When I'm making an argument about something usually the main point is making an argument about something, my mind works in a lot of argument shape. Arguments and argument making comes first, why to make them usually comes later, sometimes never. There does not have to be an additional reason for me to make some argument, itself is the reason. I understand this's not how a lot of people work, and I'm used to at this point being misunderstood and all of my arguments being attached to something, and because they tend to be against the current, sometimes something negative...

As some may remember, I wrote about this topic on the forum before, w/ the legal side spelled out, and the rule showed up not long after.
Some people read that as me being against these sales, and some went as far as calling me a cop/fed for it.
None of this is about what I personally think of KYC account sales.
It's facts, evidence and argument about what's logically consistent and what isn't.

XmrBazaar does not allow KYC account sales, only services.

A rule unchecked: does it exist?A rule unchecked: does it exist?

"Not allowed" is what the rules say, not what actually happens.
It's only true in practice if there's enough oversight to know whether it's enforced.
W/ a noninterventionist policy nobody looks at what gets delivered, so there's no concrete mechanism to show what's actually being sold, and the claim can't be shown true even in principle.

• Call A the listings that end w/ a KYC'd account in the buyer's hands.
• "Not allowed" means A gets removed.
• Removing A means knowing which listings are in A.
• Whether a listing is in A depends on what gets delivered, not on what the title says.
• Presumed legitimate until proven otherwise, w/ enforcement running on reports, means proof only shows up when someone reports.
• A working account sale has a happy buyer and a paid seller. Nobody reports it.
• So the rule can only catch the part of A that gives itself away, in the listing or through a report when a deal goes bad.

The rule potentially removes the word, not the sales.

What happened after the "rule"What happened after the "rule"

Account sales in all likelihood didn't go away after the rule, they got renamed.
Now it's "assistance" or "verification support."
There were boosted listings from big names literally titled "Account KYC & Verification Support," BEFORE getting renamed to something more lovely, and it's still going on to this day!
Those listings read as exactly that: a KYC'd account w/ a cute label to "conform".

If you know where to look...If you know where to look...

For the keen observer we don't even need to crack open private trades.
It's between the lines, in listing descriptions, comment sections, some disputes.
The facts have a way of bleeding through and hinting at what's actually changing hands :)
An after sale review thanking the seller for what was actually delivered, or a "verification support" dispute where the buyer complains the login the seller handed over stopped working, tells you exactly what changed hands.
You handle most of the mediation AND the disputes, nobody is more exposed to this than you ;)

NuancesNuances

I know you understand these, probably better than most people here, and I get that "does not allow KYC account sales" is the public facing, press release version.
A platform like this operates in a grey area.
My point is the press release version doesn't hold up once you dig even a little under it, and people do notice and talk about these inconsistencies :)
The accurate version is closer to "we remove listings that say they sell KYC accounts."
Stating what it actually is and isn't, accurately, humbly and honestly, matters more than one might realize.
I'm not against being clever, I'm just for logical and consistent cleverness :)

Hopefully I'll turn this into a proper forum post at some point, w/ the listings and numbers laid out, to show more comprehensively that this just doesn't hold up to reality.

An analogyAn analogy

A border checkpoint w/ a "No drugs" sign.
Nobody expects every car to get searched.
But if there's no way to detect drugs crossing, the sign alone doesn't show the rule works.
All you can claim is that there's a sign.
Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, especially when nobody's looking.

https://i.ibb.co/bg7CfQpJ/xmrbazaar-trilemma-v4.png

1. "All listings are presumed legitimate until proven otherwise" (forum post 1947)
2. "Every report is reviewed" (forum post 1938), meaning enforcement runs on reports
3. "XmrBazaar does not allow KYC account sales, only services."

Under report driven enforcement, any two hold together, all three can't:

• 1 + 2: proof only comes from reports, and nobody reports a deal that worked. Then 3 only catches what gives itself away, a sign on the door, not a rule.
• 1 + 3: to make the ban real w/o reports, the platform has to find the proof some other way: ask what's delivered, test buys, whatever. That's not report driven anymore, so 2 goes. I know this will never happen here :)
• 2 + 3: stay report driven and still keep the ban real by pulling "verification support" listings on looks alone. That's removal on suspicion, so 1 goes. This won't fly here either :)

You can't establish that something is being effectively prohibited simply by declaring it prohibited.
If you have no systematic way of checking whether the rule holds in practice, you have no basis for claiming that it does.
A statement about reality needs some way of being tested against reality.
Otherwise, you're merely asserting what you want to be true, not establishing what actually is true.
The distinction between declaring a rule and establishing its effectiveness in reality shouldn't be foreign to you :)

My suggestion would be to either adjust the scope of the rule so it's internally consistent w/ the rest of the policy and what's actually enforced, or show me where my argument breaks logically. How the rule reads =/= what's happening in reality.

I think bunker mode is a reasonable intermediary precaution. Breaking ECDSA w/ a classical algorithm and breaking it w/ a quantum computer are two different problems, but that's the closest sibling of it I can think of.

For example, Solana's Winternitz Vault uses hash-based one-time signatures instead of Ed25519. This's primarily relevant to quantum resistance, since Shor's algorithm doesn't give you the same shortcut against hash functions that it does against elliptic curves.

Would it solve the hypothetical AI breakthrough Drake's talking about? IDK, depends on what exactly gets broken. But it shows we can experiment w/ alternatives today, even if they come w/ tradeoffs and aren't a drop-in replacement for existing wallets, stuff we have.

These breakthroughs may come crazy fast. I think "as soon as it was general knowledge that crypto is not safe, the entire market goes to zero overnight" is a bit too catastrophic an assumption. Different chains use different cryptographic primitives, and breaking one doesn't necessarily mean all cryptography is broken tomorrow. Some breaks could and probably will be partial, affecting certain schemes, implementations or use cases more than others.

I'd rather have vaults and stuff ready as potential alternatives, and migration paths we can actually use, than watch everything burn while we're figuring out what to do IMO :P

Kayaba Luke our dear Serai amateur cryptographer (his words IIRC, not mine) would be the guy to ask such question.

Just today I was watching MikroTik software update video, saw that they included support for hybrid post quantum key exchange for SSH. Took a note. I'll check this topic further and will probably swap my keys, we'll see.

https://stasher.news/uploads/714
https://youtu.be/ZUjiBTaltvQ original ↗

My thoughts on all these aren't mature thought TBH.

This's good discussion, I was thinking about this as well but didn't want it to come off like "here's the most optimal version of the thing being build here we should migrate to this more technically challenging structure w/o even knowing if the platform itself will be viable or not" not to even mention upcoming FCMP++.

I was talking w/ dark vegas and they mentioned spasm network which has some properties that makes it better than Nostr construct.

I don't have time to get into details RN but there's a 12 mins video if anyone would like to check it out for potential stasher evolution:
https://www.spasm.network/learn
especially bc Untraceable also said

But I will refer to this post for ideas on where to begin when the time does come.

Getting something Nostr shaped might be sufficient or something like Spasm IDK.
I'd be happy to hear more about which and why.

https://stasher.news/uploads/701

https://stasher.news/uploads/702

Down deeper I think reading about writing might help.

I know some people already touched this topic here already but personally I'm curious about how getting good parts of the religions like bringing people together and providing them structure and using it for revitalization of current societal ties w/o all those nasty parts of the religion :)

All things I write come from the same heart :)

I didn't mean to say the rest of the things you say come from your appendix or something :P
I meant talking w/ less held back.
Some things come from different depths of the same heart :P

Well, I can swear more if that makes it sound honest online ))

Not necessarily swearing itself, just talking more candidly w/o having reservations about stepping on toes. I too avoid aesthetically unpleasing languge. I have the feeling there're more people aware of the shortcomings in the Monero scene, but people are perhaps too polite to talk more directly in the open.

Certainly, there's great intrigue in the level of command over language that lets you be devastating while still preserving elegance. This is something I'm thinking about as well and trying to improve myself in that direction.
I've yet to have a role model for this, though...
Any favorite videos/interviews of his you can share demonstrating him at his peak?

https://stasher.news/uploads/700

I’m into wireless networks and enjoy putting devices out there to provide people with connectivity.

Ironically, money isn’t the bottleneck, finding people willing to host devices is:
https://xmrbazaar.com/listing/PpcN

I’d use the money to give hosts more incentive, so I can expand wireless connectivity and work on projects like Wingbits and GEODNET.

I’d also interested in building a network using Wi-Fi HaLow and running Reticulum over it. The idea is to combine different wireless technologies into a sovereign “network of networks,” outside the usual ISP and datacenter route.

For example, Tarana’s next-generation fixed wireless access could provide broadband access, while MikroTik’s directional 5 GHz long-range radios and 60 GHz point-to-point links could connect sites over different distances. Those technologies handle the wireless links; Reticulum could run over the connectivity they provide to help connect independent networks.

There are lots of wireless projects to work on, I mostly need more people willing to host devices.

One thing about Monero log is that it's a bit too "on your face" IDK how to explain, it's not subtle enough IMO for every use case and every object.
That's one reason I have this my own dark version I use on stuff.
I think it also would look more elegant on such object and use case, if you'd consider:

https://stasher.news/uploads/689

I effing ❤️ before-coffee AilliA then.
Get me her agent on the line!

This was one of the most honest things you've ever written!
This's a small community; (I hope) people already know who's just mean for the sake of being mean vs. who's just being genuinely forthright for the progress.

I hope we get to hear more of before-coffee Aliena chan, she sounds so sincere!
Give her the keyboard a lil, tell her she's beautiful w/ the messy hair & "bad words," and she doesn't have to be the darling of the community, politically correct morning princess. She's just fine the way she is, as her feral self... :P

People might think I'm joking here, I'm not.
We really can use more confrontational people telling it like it is!
Echo chambers don't grow anyone!

Tipped! lol.

This's you deleting the comment thinking it's mean, only for it to be quoted beyond the grave:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HkRYtjwUzw original ↗

Back when I read it @AilliA had a reply here w/ good points. There were enough legit points there I didn't feel the need to add anything much!

Essentially she said:

• We need both: spreading the word AND actual curation/content quality.
• HN is worth a daily check because it still surfaces the best things on the internet w/o the Twitter and social media noise, and the discussion there is usually worth reading.
• HN was supposedly better before, which is what people say about everything. Once it got popular "NYT-style journosluts decided they wanted its front page", quality dipped, and now the LLM bots have showed up. It still works better than most places though (somehow?)
• Stasher has to be useful to the person scrolling w/ their morning coffee, not just to the posters and tippers, who right now are mostly betting on what hits the top on Sunday.
• Tips and rewards are fine, but if the feed is mostly circle jerk and gambling on Sunday rankings, regular readers won't stick around.
• Quality is what makes the marketing worth doing.

Basically: what gets written here has to be worth reading.

This is the kind of sharp, honest criticism we need if the platform wants any real chance at growth. The echo chamber, or circle jerk as she more aptly put it, people throwing around their subjective opinions w/o much research or reasoning behind them, that kind of quality isn't platform growth oriented. A short simplistic take w/o research/reasoning/explanation isn't worth reading, even if aggressively agreeing w/ the Monero meta gets you (Sunday) brownie points. Those points don't make the end result any less mediocre.