Commission staking has been suggested before. This was the reply on the suggestion thread from November 2019:
Our concern about opening up advertising of commission staking to just everyone is that it is nearly impossible to prove if a scam has occurred. For safety of users, we can't in good conscience allow an open section for commission staking
The thread from earlier this year had a similar reply. Commission staking would bring problems that have to be solved first. In this post I'll bring up some of the main problems that were found on the other suggestions. I invite everyone to brainstorm with possible solutions for these problems. I will also bring up some common solutions with counter arguments. This list is by no means complete and I will actively add problems/issues to the list once brought up.
Problems it could bring
It would be too easy for people to scam, including rigging/faking a stake
There are many ways to scam. Scamming can always be an issue, but with commission staking in particular there are many methods to scam without the customer even knowing they're getting scammed. Common methods are fighting your friend and having your friend win on purpose. This could be done by allowing your friend to have something in their ring slot.
There are also plugins to or overlays to hide certain things. With a simple plugin, you could make a stake look normal while secretly enabling/disabling certain options to give one of the stakers an advantage. Even when not using an external client (so using the official runescape client), you could make overlays to achieve the same thing.
There are a fair amount of scenario's that could happen. We would have to decide who is liable for what, and encourage both buyers and sellers to know these scenario's.
Commission staking can go wrong in a lot of ways. To name just a few:
- Wrong setting causes staker to lose
- Staker fails a pid swap causing the staker to lose
- Staker disconnects mid-stake
We would have to predetermine what we'd rule in which scenario and have both buyers and sellers know this beforehand. If commission staking gets added, I'm certain that we'd see new scenario's pop up daily/weekly so it would add a lot of new discussion points to ensure fair rulings.
With the staking cap, a commission staker can no longer duel a random user. The staker will either have to bet against himself, or find another user to stake against
So the traditional method of commission staking is no longer viable, as there's a cap of 10m osrs/50m rs3 per stake. This means it will be harder to find a user to stake against. The host could either stake against himself (stake a low amount against a random user, win = host wins, lose = customer wins). However, the host could now battle against his own friend instead and rig the duel to give better odds to the host.
The second option is finding some one to stake on Sythe. This could however again be a friend of the host giving the host more favorable odds.
Possible solutions with counter arguments
Sythe can hold deposits which would serve as a refund if users get scammed
Sythe himself has stated before that this can not be done for legal reasons.
Requiring the stake to be steamed
Streaming would bring extra security, but the steam would have to be private because if not it would be too easy to sabotage. I'm unaware if having a private stream could cause new problems.
Free market, don't handle commission staking reports
Definitely possible. It is indeed a free market, but it's also regulated. By adding a new section for commission staking, but not allowing commission staking reports, we would just be adding a scam-haven.
Middleman holding GP for stakes
We could create a section/thread where people can post what kind of stakes they are looking to do. One user can choose to go first and trust the other user, or both users can agree to have a middleman hold the GP. The middleman may then hold the GP and charge a fee.
However, we would still face the same issues like how easy it is to rig.
