Domain auction issue

[Gill]

There's a problem with the two major .uk auction sites. A small group of coders receive a significant percentage of any income from the sale of names caught with their software. I know for a fact that some of these people are bidding on auctions where they have a part ownership of the domain and I accept their argument will be that they want to bid for the name themselves in order to own 100% but it means they're essentially paying 50% of the final auction price.

Is this shill bidding and if not should people be forced to declare an interest so that other bidders know they're paying a significant percentage more?

 

[CatchDrop]

I thought that this was addressed on UKBO last month

https://www.acorndomains.co.uk/threads/domainlore-blog.165655/page-6#post-623346

 

[lazarus]

Why cant the catcher put in a one-time only top bid kinda like a reserve instead of bidding. If the domain sells above the reserve then great. If the reserve is not met then great. This way, bidding can not skewed/manipulated and transparency is restored.

 

[Gill]

I thought that this was addressed on UKBO last month

https://www.acorndomains.co.uk/threads/domainlore-blog.165655/page-6#post-623346

That's different, that's people bidding on their own domains, I'm talking about people who offer hosted catch services where they take a percentage of any sales. Some are bidding for names caught on their system and with no obvious link they come in under the radar.

 

[Gill]

Why cant the catcher put in a one-time only top bid kinda like a reserve instead of bidding. If the domain sells above the reserve then great. If the reserve is not met then great. This way, bidding can not skewed/manipulated and transparency is restored.

Most won't acknowledge who uses their software so won't declare an interest in a domain.

 

[Hay]

Maybe i should code up a decentralised auction platform using block chain technology which would revoke control from 1 individual and you could even go as far as making everything visible through a distributed ledger plus implementing other methods would make it almost impossible to do shill bidding

 

[Ben Thomas]

What would be the need for blockchain?

 

[Gill]

Maybe i should code up a decentralised auction platform using block chain technology which would revoke control from 1 individual and you could even go as far as making everything visible through a distributed ledger plus implementing other methods would make it almost impossible to do shill bidding

There's a definite need for a more transparent system so maybe a community owned and operated solution can be built?

 

[Ben Thomas]

And how would you propose that happen? Nothing can ever be decentralised on the internet. Someone always owns or operates the infra. Someone pays for the hosting, the maintenance. Someone has back end access. Someone has more privilege than others.

 

[Hay]

@Ben Thomas there are multiple ways you can achieve this, a decentralised solution wouldn't be easy but its definitely possible, the block chain could contain the blocks to every transaction which would be things like bids and sales ect.. it would need some thought process, i agree the hosting would need some thought too, you can use something like react on the frontend with a serverless architecture but there would still need to be a database and servers but you could potentially use a distributed method so for example a system that pulls data from multiple data stores (similar to a cluster) but designed so not 1 person can manipulate the data.. again there are possible ways round that and ultimately the goal would be so no single entity has full control but it will need a fair bit of thinking and quite a lot of coding.

I've not gave it much thought so im just throwing examples in the air but its certainly possible.