Ban Policy Implementation

Draft Proposals
1

Summary

We are committed in building a sustainable ecosystem that provides a fair and enjoyable experience for all participants. To preserve the integrity of our ecosystem, we believe that the DAO should implement a ban policy that addresses activities that violate the Terms of Service as well as other malicious activities that are detrimental to the Crypto Unicorns DAO, economy, community, game, and all associated products.

Motivation

  • To preserve the integrity of our ecosystem
  • To safeguard the economy from malicious actors without affecting players’ regular gameplay experience

Details

I. Investigation

The Crypto Unicorns team will rely on an array of tools to investigate suspicious accounts. Accounts tagged as suspicious, will then be subject to a manual review. This may involve monitoring wallet transactions, analyzing game logs, and examining any other pertinent data to determine whether or not an offense has indeed occurred.

II. User Reports

Investigations will be conducted by the Crypto Unicorns team. Player reports are not necessary in the implementation of this policy.

This proposal presents two types of sanction systems

  • Ban with warning
  • Ban without warning

A. Bans with Warning

As the effects of these types of offenses show over a period of time, warnings will be issued for those who are suspected of the following:

  • Cheating and Bots: This refers to the creation and use of any form of third-party software or application within the game. All forms of automations are covered.

B. Warnings

Players caught using any form of automation will receive a warning. The warning will be issued on Discord through the CM team by publishing a list of the wallet addresses at a weekly cadence. Owners of the addresses that have been added to the warning list shall have seven (7) days to cease the behavior. In the future, we plan to add a mailbox feature in-game. Once this is launched, the warnings will be delivered in-game.

In cases where a player who has received a warning has decided to transfer their assets to another wallet address, both the source wallet and the new wallet will be investigated.

C. Suspensions

Players who fail to cease the associated behavior upon receiving a warning will have their wallets temporarily suspended immediately. Suspended wallets are denied access to all Crypto Unicorns DAO products, which includes the main game, its second party games, and/or any other products that will be released after this policy goes into effect.

Once a temporary suspension has been served, a player may either:

  • Request a reinvestigation in case the suspension was done in error
  • Appeal the wallet suspension to restore access using the same wallet

  1. Requesting a reinvestigation

    If a participant believes that their wallet was suspended in error, they may request a reinvestigation via the ZenDesk team using the “Reinvestigation Form”. If the claims are correct, the account restriction will immediately be lifted and access will be restored without the need to write a DAO proposal.

  2. Appeal the wallet suspension

    If a participant’s suspension is found to be valid upon reinvestigation, they can appeal the decision through the Crypto Unicorns DAO. The appeal process involves the following steps:

    1. The player must submit a Draft Proposal on the forum using the “Wallet Suspension Appeal” format. This formal appeal must include the specific reasons why the suspension should be reconsidered, as well as any evidence in support.
    2. As the Wallet Suspension Appeal is a Draft Proposal, it’ll follow the governance process where it is reviewed by the governance council prior to being voted on by the DAO. In contrast to other proposals, Wallet Suspension Appeals will be aggregated and reviewed only during the sessions held on the 15th of each month.
    3. After the governance council review, the DAO will then make a decision on whether to uphold or overturn the suspension. The result is based on a majority vote and is considered valid if quorum is reached.

If the suspension is lifted, the player’s wallet access will be restored. If the suspension is upheld, the player’s access to the game will remain restricted.

A temporary suspension becomes a permanent suspension when:

  1. A player decides to no longer appeal the suspension.
  2. A player’s request to repeal the wallet suspension has been rejected by the Crypto Unicorns DAO.

D. Bans Without Warning

There are certain offenses that require that we as a DAO act quickly due to their drastic effect on the DAO and its ecosystem. For this reason, a warning will not be issued and a the ban will be applied immediately. The immediate ban option is reserved for the most dire of offenses that require immediate action for the Crypto Unicorns team, and directly relate to exploiting Crypto Unicorns smart contracts and servers. Examples of what would constitute an immediate ban include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Client spoofing and abusing the game’s resources, such as computational power or storage, to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, or engage in other malicious activities.
  • Exploiting smart contracts to “print” currency that was not legitimately earned in-game.
  • Exploiting smart contracts to illegitimately create NFTs without actually paying the associated cost.
  • Exploiting smart contracts to gain access or tamper with another players’ assets.
  • Performing malicious attacks against a smart contract or game server that results in a downtime / maintenance period.
  • Exploiting smart contracts or game server to obtain an unfair advantage (guarantee an outcome that requires RNG, etc).

G. Legal

In addition to the suspension, the Crypto Unicorns DAO also reserves the right to cooperate with law enforcement and other relevant authorities in the investigation of any suspected violations of this policy or any other illegal activity.

Changelog <June 02, 2023>

  • Removed Sybil Attack section under Ban Instances and Scenarios
  • Explained which scripts are acceptable under Cheating and Bots in Ban Instances and Scenarios
  • Added a Warning section which explains how the Warning system will work prior to making a temporary suspension
  • Removed the Reporting section
  • Clarified when reinvestigation request is possible and when a DAO appeal is necessary

Changelog v2 <June 23, 2023>

  • Added clarity on types of offenses as requested by the community
  • Included all forms of automation in the definition of Cheats and Bots for implementation simplicity as requested by some community members
  • Divided offenses between bans with warning and bans without warning to account for emergency situations
  • Added contingency for wallet transfers done after receiving a warning
2 Likes
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This is really vague. Some scripts get your account banned and your NFTs blacklisted, but some others ‘may’ be exempt. If there’s a line to be drawn in the sand on this issue, it should be a very clear one.

4 Likes
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I support Banning systems,
but there should also be warning systems.
There should be a level of severity.
There should be a clear information on what is allowed and what is not allowed.
This one doesn’t show which are you allowing and not allowing.
You can basically say that someone is doing x and y and just ban them and the public can just scrutinize that player.

The part of which the council has to agree on EACH suspension. feels like a popularity contests. if you have 10 users who got banned and all of them appealed. will you set them all for voting ? , will you give badges for all those votes? . If its a league of multiple whales who did a “crime” and they all voted Unban. would you allow ?

there are certain sets of unclear information here. for example multiple accounts. for example the current ones that are already in that process of working on their multiple accounts . what policies do you apple to these?

You must provide a clear information. this feels so generalized as it feels like you can target almost anyone. please provide specifics of what is bannable and what is not.

14 Likes
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First of all, LG allowed multiaccounts (in-game) at game launch. Pretty much sure not only me but others, who do play more than 1 account would like to see more examples on rule №6.
What would be considered as an attack?

Let’s speak about examples:

Example 1: user has 2 wallets. He doesn’t wanna climb in the leaderboard and have better rank, but wants to get the lootboxes for m1-m2-m3 milestones. He achieved 1000 points for max milestone rewards on 1st wallet, but can’t do that on 2nd wallet. User transfers UNIM+RBW from wallet 1 to 2, also transfers eggs from wallet 1 to 2 to hatch it there. What in this example is a rule violation (manipulating leaderboards)?

Example 2: once again, user has 2 wallets. He can’t do a specific quest in the Questboard on wallet 2, but he has unicorns on wallet 1 that can do it. Is it allowed or it’s also a rule violation (manipuilating game reward systems)

There are a huge bunch of examples of how you can help yourself develop your accounts. That’s the problem with multiaccounting and the fact that LG allowed it in the beginning. A huge number of OG players now have much more than 1 account. Imagine having to ban timetraveler or cuppy.

One more thing I can’t agree with that wallet is being fully locked after a temporary suspension. What if it’s your bad and wallet is not guilty? Praesumptio innocentiae. Just lock the feature to unlock/lock lands and unicorns on that wallet and let the player continue to play, because otherwise it will be a huge time gap between suspension and lifting that suspension.

Anyway, there are a lot of contradictions and vague wording that should be discussed and corrected, the proposal as it is now can only pass the vote if LG will use isRBW.

9 Likes
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to add. I’m also worried on the innocent bans.

for example they all play in the same social circle, they all share resources from themselves to grow . how does forensic tools covers this? . how does blockchain identify this? .

If an innocent player is banned your only lead is to get to Zendesk where they can just wait until forever to respond to you. or go to the forums to run a popularity contest .

this is more messy if your tools cant identify stuff or worst if you build tools that has bugs and its telling you stuff that is wrong.

That happened in axie. Nov 2021 if i remember it correctly. they banned multiple users because they said those people are multi accounting . only to find out because those people used custom firmware on their phones. Axie still said those people who has custom firmware phones are still bannable because custom firmwares lead to hacking or cheating on their system. even tho those are legitimate passionate players in the game.

Thier tools limited them to see further hence they just banned people with custom firmwares and didn’t care about the innocent players. how are we going to avoid this in our end? .

3 Likes
6

Agree on the idea of implementing warning system. Just like in new rules in Discord.
Example: 1 strike = week ban | 2 strikes = monthly ban | 3 strikes = yearly ban | 4 strikes = permanent ban.
Or something like this. Otherwise this gonna be a mess with current state of №6 rule.

3 Likes
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Any OG of CU holding one or two hundred unicorns is a normal thing. Currently, only 16 lands are supported for a single account. Forbidding multiple accounts is a suicidal act. Conversely, how to define a sybil is very troublesome and very very Difficult thing, I know the intention of this proposal is good, but considering our current DAU WAU should not focus on how to develop? After Jousting came out, there was no heat, that’s the problem

6 Likes
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I agree, we need to be very careful about this, we already have a small community, and unreasonable bans can kill the desire to play. Just as it was when the accounts hung for a week+ on breeding.
I think there should first be a warning system, this warning must be answered in Zendesk, for example, and then if cheat activity is confirmed, bans should already be made.

We also need to think about how it all will work with delegation, game need to warn me if the one to whom I entrusted the account performs some wrong actions, otherwise you can lose everything.

12 Likes
9

Agree with everything that’s been said above. Ban the botters and true abusers of exploits such as the rbw stash out exploit last year. Abusing glitches and Sybil Attacks need to be clarified in much much more detail. There has been no guidelines so far as what is allowed and not allowed outside of ToS afaik. The line between smart gameplay and “manipulating game mechanics/reward systems/leaderboards” as well as what is classified as a glitch needs to be drawn very clearly and obviously. As we all know CU is a game of min/maxing your every move and a lot of times that can be done by using multiple accounts and even creating fresh accounts. This is not on the players, this is on LG for incentivizing such behavior.

The lootbox rewards being bottom heavy is a great example of this. Many players would rather have significantly more lootboxes vs getting a few spots higher on the leaderboard for minimal reward increases. Jousting is another example of players having many strong unicorns and wanting to joust with them. Jousting on 1 account previously meant potentially not being able to joust for hours or even at all.

DAO voting seems like a way to take the blame of an incorrect ban out of LG’s hands. If a player was in clear violation they should be banned(for a small time period at first in my opinion) without the need for sRBW holders to pass judgement. At the end of the day it would be in my best interest to see a whale banned if they’re just extracting. Less corns/land means higher scarcity. The community is full of cliques and a popularity contest is ridiculous when talking about potentially tens to hundreds of thousands of assets. Many aspects of this proposal NEED to be clarified or re-thought in significantly more detail before it should be voted on. My council vote to have community vote on this will be a strong no until the proposal is revised and specifics are given

10 Likes
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The proposal have many black holes and subjective takes that can be interpreted in multiple ways. Its not acceptable for one to risk loosing his assets just because the system is not clear enough. So my suggestions is: bring complete clarity first, define properly the meaning and the severity of each and every aspect and also create a warning system first.

Secondly, putting bans to DAO vote comes with the danger on turning this into a popularity contest. Like if someone aint liked by some whales, they can just invent a reason and totally screw him. Unacceptable.

Next I am gonna diseminate all of the proposal aspects:

*A. Ban Scenarios and Instances

  1. Terms of Service Violations: This covers any violations against the Crypto Unicorns Terms of Services .*

While I agree on this, TOS has some unclear aspects that can be easily used against an innocent player. Example: (vii) interfere with other users’ enjoyment of the App. What does this even mean? Like if I win jousting every time against some1 cause I follow the meta, he can just report me on interfering with his enjoyment?

2. Hacking and Exploits: This includes any attempt to exploit smart contract, backend, or frontend vulnerabilities to manipulate game mechanics, take in-game assets or treasury funds, or disrupt any functionality.

Define exploits and manipulation of game mechanics. If we play the game by following meta and getting the most out of it, is it exploining game mechanics or just intended feature of the game? I agree with the rest

3. Cheating and Bots: This refers to the creation and use of automated software, such as bots or scripts, to obtain an unfair advantage over other participants or players. Simple scripts that do not negatively impact the economy may be exempt from this.

This is clear. I agree with it. Breeding scripts for example can be used from my understanding of the last line.

4. Abusing Glitches: This refers to exploiting a platform’s intended and unintended features or bugs for an unfair advantage.
This one is tricky. How does one know what features are intended and which are unintended? Again, define exploiting. Bugs is one thing, features is totally different. How about you make sure your features are fine first before putting the blame on players? I am for baning ppl exploiting bugs, but not ppl playing features to their full potential.

5. Unreported Security Bugs: This includes exploiting a security bug or vulnerability for personal gain or to cause harm to the platform or its users without reporting it, as well as sharing information about a security bug or vulnerability with other users without reporting it, thus enabling or encouraging its exploitation. A significant part of sustaining the security and integrity of the Crypto Unicorns DAO and ecosystem involves addressing potential security vulnerabilities. Users who discover security flaws or vulnerabilities are expected to promptly report them using the Security Bug Bounty form.
Same as above, I agree bans for exploiting bugs

6. Sybil Attacks: This refers to the creation and use of multiple accounts for the purpose of manipulating game mechanics/reward systems/leaderboards, evading suspensions, or influencing the governance system.
Another tricky one. Example: I have 10 accounts, I distribute my breeding/evo equally between them so I get a good placement on the leaderboards with all, instead of going for top10 with one because my math says I am getting more rewards. Am I banable? Or only applyes to fresh created accounts for that purpose?

7. Misuse of Game Resources: This includes abuse on the game’s resources, such as computational power or storage, to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, or engage in other malicious activities.
I agree

*B. Temporary Suspensions

  1. Wallets: Players caught violating any of the above will have their wallets temporarily suspended immediately. Suspended wallets are denied access to all Crypto Unicorns DAO products, which includes the main game, its second party games, and any other products that will be released after this policy goes into effect.
  2. NFT Assets: When a wallet is temporarily suspended, any NFT assets associated with the wallet will be tagged as “blacklisted” on the Hawku Marketplace and will remain in the game while the wallet’s in-game access will be disabled. The “blacklist” tagging in the marketplace is intended to protect unsuspecting players from purchasing NFTs associated with suspended wallets by error.*

I dissaprove, players should get the benefit of the doubt and should first get a warning and a flag for it. Except for severe violations and crushing evidence against them.

*Once a temporary suspension has been served, a player may either:

  • Request a reinvestigation in case the suspension was done in error
  • Appeal the wallet suspension to restore access using the same wallet
  1. Request a reinvestigationIf a participant believes that their wallet was suspended in error, they may request a reinvestigation via the ZenDesk team using the “Reinvestigation Form” within seven (7) days of the ban. If the claims are correct, the account restriction will immediately be lifted and access will be restored.
  2. Appeal the wallet suspensionIf a participant believes that their wallet was suspended in error, they can appeal the decision through the Crypto Unicorns DAO. The appeal process involves the following steps:a. The player must submit a Draft Proposal on the forum using the “Wallet Suspension Appeal” format. This formal appeal must include the specific reasons why the suspension should be reconsidered, as well as any evidence in support.
    b. As the Wallet Suspension Appeal is a Draft Proposal, it’ll follow the governance process where it is reviewed by the governance council prior to being voted on by the DAO. In contrast to other proposals, Wallet Suspension Appeals will be aggregated and reviewed only during the sessions held on the 15th of each month.
    c. After the governance council review, the DAO will then make a decision on whether to uphold or overturn the suspension. The result is based on a majority vote and is considered valid if quorum is reached.

If the suspension is lifted, the player’s wallet access will be restored and the blacklist tags on the affected assets will be removed. If the suspension is upheld, the player’s access to the game will remain restricted.*

I dissaprove, is a long process that can really hurt an innocent player. While someone in clear violation might be bailed out just cause he is a popular figure of the DAO.

*A temporary suspension becomes a permanent suspension when:

  1. A player decides to no longer appeal the suspension.
  2. A player’s request to repeal the wallet suspension has been rejected by the Crypto Unicorns DAO.*

I dissaprove, mild violation should not bring with them permanent bans. You are basically putting in the same room some dude who found a bug that allowed him to earn an extra 5rbw per day with someone that hacked stashing smart contract and got some millions off.

*C. Investigation

Crypto Unicorns DAO will investigate suspected offenses using a variety of tools, techniques, and procedures to identify malicious activities. This may involve monitoring wallet transactions, analyzing game logs, and examining any other pertinent data to determine whether or not an offense has indeed occurred.*
Agreed

*D. Reporting

Players are urged to report any suspicious behavior. This is possible by submitting a ticket through ZenDesk. All reports will be promptly investigated, and the appropriate measures will be implemented.*

Also agreed, but take into account the benefit of the doubt

*E. Legal

In addition to the suspension, the Crypto Unicorns DAO also reserves the right to cooperate with law enforcement and other relevant authorities in the investigation of any suspected violations of this policy or any other illegal activity.*

Agreed for really serious stuff

Conclussion

**While I dont entirely dismiss the implementation of a ban system, the proposed one have so many issues I cannot approve it going live like ths. You have to grade severity and issue warnings/temporary bans/permanent bans based on the gravity of the action. Also gotta clear the fog on the highly subjective aspects that can be manipulated by a part of DAO for specifically hurting a player. Also stop dumping on users the responsibility of having balanced game features.
**

8 Likes
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  1. One account can only hold 16 pieces of land, can you open more accounts to play games?
  2. If there are multiple accounts, if you want to evolve and give birth, you must put them in one account?
  3. Under multiple accountst, if it is purely for the purpose of giving birth and not for obtaining event rewards, but it complies with the reward rules, is it considered a violation of the rules?
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What part is unclear? There are 7 bullets that says what is not allowed. Let me know which parts are unclear.

Yes, multi-accounting is still okay. The section did say that it applies only when it results to manipulation of mechanics/reward systems/leaderboards, evading suspensions, or influencing the governance system.

Can you list them?

This is not exactly a problem. To begin with, writing a proposal is the same admitting that your ZenDesk appeal was rejected since the banning is legit. Would the community really want to let someone like that back in, I wonder?

No exploitation there.

Patch notes and announcements.

No. This doesn’t really cause any harm to the economy or ecosystem.

None of the items listed here are considered minor though.

Totally fine.

Not really.

No. You’re fine.

No, actually, the ZenDesk is for false bans.

13

I am highly in favour of banning maliscious activities BUT I am severely worried about this proposal and I cannot approve it at all.

First of all, like others mentioned already, it is way way too vague.
This proposal indicates several cases where some of your (for some the ENTIRE) networth gets banned out of nowhere.
You might just wake up the other day, just to see your account banned (whether that is justified or not) and all your assets being locked in the game, which are worth several thousands of dollars and you will not get access to it if the team doesnt find itself having done some error or if the community doesn´t approve an unban?

" 1. This refers to the creation and use of automated software, such as bots or scripts, to obtain an unfair advantage over other participants or players. Simple scripts that do not negatively impact the economy may be exempt from this."

  • Noone has an idea of whats okay and what is not. The team might like your simple script, you can use it. The team might find your simple script not to be simple enough, you are banned.

“This refers to exploiting a platform’s intended and unintended features or bugs for an unfair advantage”

  • Sometimes you might not even be aware of using something in an unintended way, you are just happy to make some profit, banned.

“This includes exploiting a security bug or vulnerability for personal gain”

  • Same again, what exactly is exploiting a vulnerability? Was refreshing the game to refresh quests at the beginning an exploit? Maybe yes, maybe no. Whatever, banned.

“This refers to the creation and use of multiple accounts for the purpose of manipulating game mechanics”

  • I totally get that immense exploitation of events, due to distributing assets to 100 accounts and getting an insane advantage, should not be allowed. However, there´s dozens of people having dozens of accounts. What if the team feels like this is some way of exploiting already because they´re weirdly sending stuff back and forth, even though its just normal operations for him? Whatever, your 10 accounts are banned.

I think its pretty clear to see where I am coming from.
As I said, I think its very beneficial to warn/ban clearly maliscious activities. But this proposal could just as well cost me my two accounts which are worth thousands of dollars, just because the team thinks that I did something too wrong.

Now you might say “Well, just request a reinvestigation or appeal the wallet suspension”.
What if the team just thinks “no we´re right, you gotta be banned” and if I am not a community favorite, having a lot of enemies in the discord which want to see me banned? Guess what, I will stay banned and all my assets are rendered worthless.

Overall, even though that the intentions are good, I think this proposal is a HUGE HUGE risk for the entire game.
I can easily see many people running off, simply due to the fear of losing so much money out of the blue, just because you are… BANNED!

If there would be a warning system, which then leads to temporary bans (except for real exploitation in form of hacking the game bank etc., this is so severe that it justifies an immediate ban of course), I might be okay with more vague descriptions of ban-worthy actions like you have it here.

But as it is, it is a big big NO from me. And even I myself, might consider selling my assets before LG decides to ban me for whatever reason. I do not think that I am doing anything wrong, but the risk of someone accusing me of doing something might just not be worth losing $10,000 for me. This is not web3 in my opinion.

2 Likes
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Didn’t updated page, already answered

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I shared two simple examples and both are left unanswered, I have a bunch of different ones but don’t want to expose, just because they are too… good to be shared in public just because game is complex and many might not even think about doing certain things.

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Sorry, which part shows contradiction? I responded that the situation you presented and said multi-accounting is still fine and pointed to the explanation that says when there is a manipulation in place that is harmful to the economy and ecosystem. That answers both of your examples. What I’m asking is which part shows the contradiction in wording so I can address it.

18

Very risky proposal in a Web3 environment.

People should also think about how much harm threatening people with all assets being banned can cause versus how much benefit it can provide. It is sadly not all black or white.

Web3 is all about “Code is Law”, this should be the focus instead of creating complexes rules full of grey area which threaten permanent assets bans.

Simply reading some people thought I saw about that proposal and I already saw many who just want to flee away. Is this what we want in the current low DAU environment ? Probably not.

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I have never been as worried about this game as I am right now, honestly. And if this goes through then I really dont know what I will be doing, I am not sure whether I will be able to risk such a huge chunk of my networth to the decision of some team members.

How about LG stepping up their code and mechanics instead of blaming the players?
For example:

  1. I am pretty sure, that everyone that refreshed questboards with simply pressing F5 somewhat violated one of the several vague rules above. This could´ve gotten everyone of those players banned, just because LG implemented major bugs.

  2. Milestones: There was several cases of players evolving babies on fresh accounts, just to farm lootboxes. How about you implement a system that prevents such stuff?
    e.g. an account has to be X days old / account has to have X assets / account has to be active X days / only assets are counted that have been there before the milestone started / only assets are counted that are directly coming from this account (f.e. bred babies), no assets that have been transferred to it. WHATEVER.

BAN hackers for: Serious exploits and hacks (exploit to drain funds from the gamebank), hacks stealing assets …
WARN players for: Game exploits/bugs being used, unintended game mechanics, scripts, multi accounting

And if they´ve collected 3 WARNINGS, ban them for 1 week. If they collect X warnings, ban for X weeks, if they collect Y warnings, ban them permanently.
This way they will at least be able to unlock all their assets and sell them, without risking losing an insane amount of money.

This is not a web2 Clash of Clans, Brawl Star or Hay Day, where its F2P. This is an investment.

1 Like
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The focus here is not the “simple script” part but that it should not negatively impact the economy.

The intended purposes will always be in patch/dev notes and announcements.

Please review the responses to other people. It’s fine, as before.

Why would someone who is not doing anything that’s worth a ban fear anything? I’d like to understand this. However, a warning might be a good idea! This is definitely something we can all look at. Since all we have is a list of wallets, I cannot imagine how the warning system would look like though. Do you have any thoughts? Thanks.

21

the whole №6 is a contradiction between reaping the benefits ofmultiaccounting and sybil activity for me.
You can tell by the noise we can see in this thread, very rarely people get active right after the thread has been started like a couple of hours ago :grinning:

If those both examples are allowed, can you give a couple of examples of violating the rules? Doesn’t matter, if they really were in the game and now fixed or completely made up.

1 Like