Bisq has rules in place to make the trading process as safe and convenient as possible for all parties involved, and it is important those rules are followed by users.
Penalties are a percentage of the trade amount, deducted from the offending peer's security deposit and offered as a compensation to the other peer during the dispute resolution process.
The actual penalty will be up to the values detailed below, depending on security deposit % and mediator's discretion, except for 100% penalties, that refer to serious violations and will always imply losing the whole amount (trade + deposit).
Alternatively, if good communication is established, peers can use trader chat to agree on a penalty amount to relay to their mediator.
| Buyer or Seller | |
|---|---|
| 100% | Fraud attempt: debiting of peer's account, code tampering |
| 25% | Not responding to a mediator within 48h |
| 20% | Cancelling a trade |
| 20% | Requesting that payment be made from/to a different account name, without mediator's acknowledgement |
| 10% | Requiring personal data: ID, home address, etc. (Bisq should incentivize accounts that do not ask for any more info than necessary) |
| Buyer | |
|---|---|
| 100% | Payment chargeback |
| 25% | Bitcoin-related payment references (eg. BTC, Bisq, Bitcoin...) |
| 25% | Paying from an account with a different name (Name Surname instead of Surname Name, and/or slight variations are allowed, where they do not generate ambiguity), seller is allowed to cancel the trade with no penalty |
| 20% | Payment is 72+ hours late |
| 15% | Payment is 48-72 hours late |
| 15% | Paying from an account with same name but different account number, seller is allowed to cancel the trade with no penalty |
| 10% | Payment is 24-48 hours late |
| 10% | Similar, but wrong, payment method (eg. SWIFT instead of SEPA, SEPA instant instead of Wise...) |
| 10% | Wrong payment amount: buyer has the option to correct the amount within the trade window, seller is allowed to cancel the trade with no penalty |
| 10% | Using unagreed payment reference |
| 10% | Late payment because of low fee for altcoin tx; penalty can be reduced during mediation if buyer uses RBF or similar |
| 5% | Payment is up to 24 hours late |
| Seller | |
|---|---|
| 15% | BTC is released outside of trade window |
I personally never considered the idea of option trading, as I'm not that kind of trader, yet I understand a strong position against it, as it could be damaging/takes advantage of other innocent users.
While, on the other hand, I am actually in favour of bringing the "late payment" back to a flat percentage (for simplicity's sake, other than what @MwithM wrote) and have mediators account for the real percent amount to choose.
The "difference in payment account/name" penalty means, the way I see it, two separate things between the two tables: in Buyer/seller, it is a request made by one of the two, to significantly alter the payment used as agreed upon on offer taking; in "buyer only" it is the buyer who singlehandedly decides to use a payment different from the one set in the offer details. But yes, while I understand that, a new user might be confused by the terminology, let's see if I can find a way to express this.
Edit: actually, upon re-reading, I don't think a new user should be confused, if they have basic understanding of the english language; a re-read, or even re-re-read, should clearly deliver the correct meaning.