Is Ahonex Giving Free Money to Bots?
I discovered a disturbing new feature on Ahonex called Bidpay. If you use the Splinterlands auction site Ahonex.com, you may have noticed the small "Bidpay" icon attached to some of the items. After further investigation, I realized that this feature is in fact a SCAM. Yes, and I do not use these words lightly, but this is warranted. Nobody should participate in a "Bidpay" auction because it is a scammy system designed to reward insiders and bots with free money from other users. This needs to be investigated further and the "Bidpay" feature needs to be removed if my analysis is correct.
The Ahonex "Bidpay" feature is explained in the small paragraph below. Anytime a bid is made on top of another bid, meaning if it is the second bid or later, then the current bidder has to pay 5% above his actual bid, and that money is transferred to the previous bidder. The only person exempted from this extra 5% tax seems to be the first bidder, and they will indeed receive the next person's 5% Bidpay fee without having to put anything in. Essentially free money in exchange for being the first to place a bid on the auction. Then as long as someone beats your bid down the line, you are not only refunded but you are given free money, straight from the next user who has to pay more, and then everyone else down the line until the auction winner. In the end, everyone is "refunded" except for the auction winner, who paid 5% more, and the first bidder who made free money.
Within the scope of the Hive blockchain, this must be considered a scam. Automated accounts, or bots, will snipe any auction that comes up to try to get the first bid. They will try to bid low enough that someone else will outbid them later, and high enough for the 5% fee to be maximized. It's like The Price is Right, you want to stay as close as possible to the final price without overbidding. As long as you can do this, and are the first to bid, you will get free money from the auction.
Here we can see the strategy playing out. The first bidder, mot4rio, was refunded his initial 5000 DEC bid and received a bidpay fee of 250 DEC from bulldog1205 who is leading the auction. The bid price says 9625 DEC, but bulldog paid 9875 DEC to place his bid. mot4rio got the difference, and bulldog got SCAMMED (poor bulldog, first the squirrel and now this).
We can see that mot4rio is doing this to other auctions as well, and he will make free money if anyone outbids him in all those auctions. Ahonex has been turned into a cash cow for bots and abusers through the implementation of the "Bidpay" system. Brave browser was right after all, this site IS dangerous! I'm sorry I ever doubted you.
"But Leq!" I hear you say. "It's only 250 DEC. Why do you have to be such a nitpicker?" Well here is one auction where it won't only be 250 DEC. This guy is selling an occupied legendary plot, and a user called omg-sp2 already bid 701k DEC. There is a good chance someone ends up buying this land plot for more than this, in which case the user omg-sp2 will receive 35k DEC for free, straight from the next bidder. That means YOU, as a bidder, will have to pay 736k DEC in order to register a 701k bid. SCAM!
Please spread the word so we can get this feature removed immediately. It's not cool, it's not fun. It is robbery. It is a scam.
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Having read your post, and the examples of the behaviour you've used, I'm going to say that the answer to the question you pose is "Yes"
Two other reasons no one should use Bidpay in its current form:
if you aren’t the first bidder, you will pay out the bonus on the previous bid, then if someone bids more than you you might get less DEC back than you started with, (especially if the bidder below you was the first bidder)
it’s a raw deal for sellers too… seller pays 5% for the auction, plus an extra cost to add bidpay, and the last bidpay amount comes out of your final sale proceeds at the end (so as a seller it feels like you are paying commission three times)
Long story short this feature isn’t benefitting real buyers or sellers; and should be scrapped or reworked
PRO MOVE FOR BOTS WHO WANT RISK FREE PROFITS:
Be the first bidder and Bid 1 DEC below the reserve.
So either way it’s an entirely risk-free opportunity.
And since it’s below the reserve you have no capital risk of accidentally buying the card.
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STOPI disagree that it is a scam, but it's probably poorly implemented. I've made a small amount of DEC from being the first one to bid, but I also lost DEC after not being the first one to bid and getting outbid later, and receiving less "bonus" than I had paid before.
Still, people are free not to use bidpay on their auctions. No one's forced to use that system if they want to use Ahonex.
No need to call it a Scam. it is almost certainly not how it was intended to be used, it is exploitable, however, and in the crypto space, something that is exploitable gets exploited. in this case, probably by bots.
bidpay was confusing, but it was optional. my first few bids on a bidpay auction were terribly done, because i didn't understand it. i'm guessing most auctions with bidpay were done by people who didn't realize that it discourages bidding.
but the fact that it discourages bidding, meant that while i didn't get to bid on some cards that i might have otherwise been bidding on, other times, i got cards cheaper than i would have, and in a few instances, i made money from bidpay and won the card.
sadly, that is because bidpay isn't a good system, and i can't think of a simple fix for it.
but that doesn't mean its a scam, in fact, that is highly unlikely. it means that it isn't a good idea for sellers. they are literally paying extra to discourage people from bidding.