I am making this post in the name of transparency, regarding a specific dispute case involving the arbitrator Tinted and user Grefin. In the following I try to be as neutral as possible.
Timeline of events:
19th of August:
A trade with Grefin as maker and XMR seller is taken, however the trade partner asks Grefin for extra identifying information, claiming it was requested by the bank.
A taker should only expect to receive whatever is stated in the offer. At this point Grefin has every right to have the trade canceled.
Grefin opens a dispute, stating the issue to the arbitrator Tinted and asks for the trade to be canceled due to the extra information asked for by their trade partner.
Tinted agrees but still needs to confirm with Grefins trade partner that the trade should be canceled and no funds were sent.
21st of August:
Tinted gives the non-responsive trade partner 24 hours to respond, otherwise they will assume no funds have been paid and cancel the trade.
The trade was a sell offer worth 4.2882 XMR with a 0.675 security deposit, which amounts to 4.9632 XMR. Since the maker fee of 0.5% still applies so the payout amount to Grefin should have been ~4.93838 XMR minus Monero network fees.
Tinted decided a small reimbursement from the taker towards Grefin is justified and tries to pay out 4.95 XMR to Grefin.
This payout fails due to a (now fixed) Haveno bug. Tinted instructs Grefin to apply a patch to their local Haveno-reto client to enable the option to re-open the closed dispute and re-attempt the payment before the next version of Haveno-reto is released.
Re-opened disputes can sometimes be displayed in a bugged state where they are open on the client side but still closed on the arbitrator side. At this point the client can send messages and the arbitrator can read them but is unable to reply.
Eventually the payment is properly broadcasted and Grefin receives a payout of 4.95 XMR. Due to the trade fee, Grefin has now 0.0132 XMR less than before the trade and 0.01162 XMR more than without the small reimbursement made from the trade partners security deposit.
At this point, Tinted is unaware the payout has cleared and is waiting on version 1.0.11 to release to re-attempt the payout.
5th of September:
Grefin asks Tinted in the Haveno reto SimpleX group why they have received less than they expected, claiming their trade partner tried to scam them and that they deserve the partners full security deposit of 0.675 XMR. Grefin also accused Tinted of potentially colluding with the trade partner but didn’t provide any details nor evidence supporting this very serious accusation.
We have stated in the past that we make our decisions with the help of bisqs table of penalties. Since Haveno is still relatively new, we are more lenient in regards to traders going MiA since it might be related to a software issue. According to the table, asking for more info (specifically “shotgun KYC”) carries a penalty of up to 10% of the security deposit. Since the request for more information was made before any funds were sent, Tinted chose to only apply a fraction of the penalty.
I offered Grefin to pay 0.25 XMR out of my own pocket but they have declined. Tinted offered to pay the full 10% penalty (0.067 XMR) to Grefin out of pocket but so far Grefin has not provided a Monero address.
In my personal opinion, Tinted did not make a major mistake, although Grefin should have had the entirety of the arbitration fee covered by the trade partners security deposit. In the future we will put extra importance on this when making payout decisions.
This situation has highlighted the maker-taker fee split. I would like to know peoples opinions on if we should keep the existing split (0.1% taker, 0.5% maker) or adjust it. For comparison, Localmonero used to have a 1% taker and no maker fee. I should also mention that we are reluctant to setting either side to 0% since we don’t know for sure that it won’t cause any software-related issues.
Thank you for reading, I hope this post clears up any misunderstandings regarding this specific arbitration case.
-m, haveno-reto
It’s just plain silly to host the tech for a decentralized platform on Github. This may be another instance of the hidden costs of using a platform where many devs (myself included) simply will not participate. Github is both proprietary and closed-source. It’s parent Microsoft has a decades-long history of antagonism towards open source.
The suggestion that anything has changed with Microsoft’s role in open source is not just naive, it’s actually dangerous. A wolf, even in sheep’s clothing, will predictably tear apart the community home the moment it is invited in. Microsoft’s controlling investment in Github is a testament to its ongoing commitment to its well-documented strategy to Embrace, Extend, and finally Extinguish everything open source.
Tech discussions need to take place in one central place, where all the developers are. That one central place needs to be absolutely secure, open-source, and community-controlled without any trace of giant corporate financial interests.
Otherwise why don’t we just use PayPal and Coinbase?
as long as the reto owners are maintaining their anonymity while accessing github, it’s all good. (at least keeping Tor in between themselves and the git platform) and of course not kycing themselves through their actions
I am happy to hear that the status quo works well for you — and I’m certainly not advocating that it shouldn’t. This is not a zero-sum game. Just like some people really liking PayPal and Coinbase today doesn’t mean there’s no legitimate need for Haveno. All of those options can coexist.
These foundational systems for Haveno must not work better for any one segment of the population than they do for the others, because that can only isolate and fragment the Haveno ecosystem before it is even fully-formed.
There are so many options available for issue-tracking and for source code hosting. To use the 1 most common name from those large (and incredibly diverse) lists only because most are comfortable using that dominant player would be quite like not making/advocating for/using Haveno because Paypal and Coinbase work okay for so many people.
there are other options out there yeah, to decentralize further i’d recommend them spinning up their own gitea. but if they can maintain their anonymity while using github, in the end both roads lead to rome.