Over the course of the last month, we have seen an increasing number of scam coins in the marketplace. Bittrex has had the unfortunate displeasure of hosting a few of these. As such, we had a discussion with some members of the community (influential people, pool operators, coin devs, etc) to see what we, as a community, can do about it. This is a crypto currency problem that the community needs to work together to solve.
First, the raw logs can be found here
Out of the conversation today, we came up with 3 action items:
We will be supporting a community run scam bounty. If a scam coin is listed at an exchange, and we are able to stop it before any users get hurt, a bounty will be paid out. We already have support from a couple big pools and will be talking to others. @CryptoCobain will hold the wallet and lead this effort - ETA 8/1
We will make available a feature to show when a coin has been "vetted". This is just a designation that someone has looked at the code and is willing to put their name to it. This will be a community driven effort. - ETA 8/15
We will be adding additional security checks around markets and wallets similar to our forking and double spend checks. False positives may shutdown markets and currencies while we investigate. We will not be publishing specifics since that will notify attackers. These gates are not a substitute for due diligence by traders but will raise the bar on scammers.
These are not 100% solutions, nor do I think there are any. We are committed to raising the bar and I think these are the right first steps.
[Update 7/29 - 11:30pm]
Just to clarify some points I saw today.
- We are announcing coins to EVERYONE at the same time - no one is getting advanced notice. You will see these in the form of tweets like we have always done.
- We are encouraging EVERYONE to review the code. @CryptoCobain is one of many who has offered. This is NOT about one individual.
- The reason I call out @CryptoCobain is because I did not want the exchange to own the "Scam Bounty". I'd like a community group to run the bounty program eventually. In the short term, he has offered to own the wallet.