Punish Illegally Minted ICE

Background:

In all type of games there is going to be a degree of cheating, especially when there is a financial interest behind. ICE poker is no different and we are all aware that there is cheating going on. By cheating I am directly referring to what is called “chip dumping”, this is a form where someone will purposely lose to another account they own or have connection to, in order to make one of those accounts get a higher multiplier and therefore more ICE.

The financial component of this activity is increased when using weaker NFTs, or from NFTs delegated from unaware owners, to NFTs of either owners participating on cheating, or directly owning the NFTs.

Lets expand this likely scenarios:

• You own NFTs, you go in look for someone to delegate NFTs to you, and you lose from the delegated account to the account you created to play your own NFTs. Here, even when the playing accounts get banned, the owning account won’t be (or less likely to be).
• You are just a player. You have an owner (or a manager), who is aware you are a cheater. He therefore is willing to keep delegating to new accounts as yours get banned. Sometimes the owner might even pay the cheating player extra ICE as part of a nefarious deal.

Therefore we have both a wave of new accounts being created. Owners either wasting their time finding players to have their accounts dumped, or owners, willingly or not, profiting from a poor vetting (or deliberately).

Triumviratus Guild, (a Manager Guild that offers to manage owners NFTs), has been for a long time reporting cheaters, many times self reporting its own players. As of recently, with new owners requesting Triumviratus Manager services, due to recommendations and positive feedback, we have access to several guilds history. And the amounts of banned accounts are astonishing… These are good people who either had cheating managers or bad luck. As an investor it might become even more work to constantly find new players, to constantly have accounts banned, and eventually get his own account banned as a consequence... This isn’t even taking into account owners who purposely do the cheating and collaborate. Either eventually shifting blame to the manager, or, paying the activation fees to move the wearables. This is a very small punishment for what is basically stealing money from the community, and very profitable to do.

Illegally minted ICE can be a substantial % of the overall ICE mints. I would not be surprised if the numbers (which we haven’t been able to obtain), rounded in the 15-25% (one account for example had ~300 past addresses delegated, of which today only ~30 past addresses aren’t banned). This causes the price of ICE fall, as cheaters don’t reinvest in the project. Additionally this takes the top spots to honest players. Being able to stop this would not only be the fair and correct thing to do, but also help the price of ICE, and make honest players earn more by achieving higher multipliers.

Even with V3 coming into effect, there will always be cheaters, even if they are reduced by 90%, some will still be able to cheat, therefore those caught should face consequences. The following proposal aims to fix that by tackling the financial component of this problem.

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Proposal:

• Owners get 70% of the illegally minted ICE by cheating (banned) accounts confiscated.
• This confiscation will be by deducting the banked ICE from the owners. That number can go negative (below 0).
• ICE confiscation can only be the last 5 days (active played days) of the banned player.

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Rational: Current measure of cheating punishment will still go into place. An owner who is caught cheating will still get bans as they do today.

The proposal aim is to tackle 2 main aspects:

• The newly made accounts, who after 3 days get banned
• Not allowing owners to massively profit, knowingly or not, from cheating activities.

In this proposal, a player who cheats can make the owner 1600+ daily ICE. At the end of the day, the owner still gets to keep ~500 ICE. This is already a reasonable amount to keep, and maybe not as drastic than it could be – and in a future proposal it can be increased – but at least they aren’t getting 1600+ daily ice.

There is literally a financial disadvantage to attempt to stop cheating in your own guild and to report your suspected cheaters. Or even allow some to happen. After all, if someone cheats for you, as an owner, you are massively profiting. Now you will get below average ICE rewards. It is no longer worth, from a financial standpoint, allowing this.

For owners who are cheating, or collaborating with cheaters via payments, we just cut their gains by a lot. Hopefully enough not to sustain this economic module.

From the owners who get players with -5000 constantly due to cheaters, and the time spent dealing with this problem, they are less likely to be prayed by cheaters, as those cheaters no longer have owners on the other side as willingly to cheat. Dumping only happens when you have where to dump to…

This also doesn’t greatly punish an owner who had a player for, example, 2 months, and who just started to cheat in the end, or did a less serious offense. He will still be penalized up to 5 playing days, but not for the whole 60 playing days. The main issue is the cheating rings who constantly make accounts every 3 days, for top 10/5%. And the ICE that (or any other form of cheating) produced.

A delay on the confiscation of ICE is also wise by the team (and at the team discretion to when apply it) as to give time for people to contest the ban + allow the team to internally organize their working day to complete this task.

Be this 20% of the illegal ICE minted, be it 2% in the future, be it 0% when there is no more cheating. This proposal makes sense, it’s able to be implemented quickly, its fair and necessary for the community. It tackles this cancer in ICE poker, and will greatly benefit everyone – well everyone but these cheaters.