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Why would I dispute it? At best the title is misleading though as most readers likely aren't aware of how Uniswap works and will think "97% of the tokens are sc

• pyrale 4y ago
  Yeah, people should remember that they have 2.3% chance of not getting scammed on uniswap. That's the definition of safe to use.
  • Sargos 4y ago
    Misconceptions like yours are why the title is misleading. If you go to Uniswap right now you will not see any of these tokens and have a near 0% chance of being scammed.
    • oarsinsync 4y ago
      > If you go to Uniswap right now you will not see any of these tokens and have a near 0% chance of being scammed If there's 100 tokens listed on the front page, and one of them is a scam, that may be near 0%, but it's equally near to 2%. I'd be pretty confident that there's a >1% chance of being scammed on a platform like this. FTT wasn't thought to be a scam until it was proven to be. Unless a token issuer does so with fully audited accounting with real assets backing their tokens, why should any token not be default assumed to be a scam, instead of default assumed to be valid? Popularity and usage doesn't change this point. USDT may be incredibly popular, but it also lacks credibility. Disclaimer: I still remain long BTC (lol@myself)
      • saurik 4y ago
        > ...but it's equally near to 2%. Ignoring anything else you might have gotten wrong, the comment you are responding to didn't say a 2.3% chance of being scammed, it said a 2.3% chance of NOT being scammed, which is nowhere near 0% or 2%, as it comes from abusing the 97.7% figure from the paper.
        • oarsinsync 4y ago
          As amused as I am to be roasted by the great cydia himself, ignoring all the other things I got wrong, I wasn’t actually responding to the 2.3% claim, but rather the original claim that the top 100 tokens on the front page weren’t scams. I think the majority of those top 100 tokens are not properly audited with tangible assets backing them. FTT remains the most recent glowing example.
    • pyrale 4y ago
      It's not misconceptions, it's accepting that the whole ecosystem is fraudulent, and that as an intermediation layer, uniswap fails to protect consumers. If any payment processor was letting 97.7% of its merchant users be fraudulent, they would be closed yesterday.
      • Sargos 4y ago
        This paper is discussing listings and not volume. No one is claiming these tokens had any amount of meaningful volume and most likely weren't even traded by a real user. If 97% of Uniswap's volume was fraudulent then I wouldn't even give it the time of day. To fix your analogy, it's like a payment processor having thousands of fake storefronts able to accept payment. If 97% of their volume was to those fake entities then definitely shut them down but most of the volume would be Amazon and Walmart and the fake storefronts wouldn't even be a rounding error. Volume info: https://info.uniswap.org/ https://info.uniswap.org/
  • throwup 4y ago
    This is logically incoherent. It would only be true if you chose a token completely at random instead of choosing a widely-used token you wanted to use. Reminds me of "it either works or it doesn't, so there's a 50/50 chance"
    • socialismisok 4y ago
      Trusting all individuals to make safe decisions in a marketplace flooded with scams is just not scalable. You cannot educate every user in how to identify a scam. And excluding users who haven't gone through that education hardly seems like the democratization of finance that these services advertise.
      • eswat 4y ago
        If we’re talking about Uniswap specifically, it actually does a decent job of adding guardrails (only listing curated tokens from the Token Lists standard) and warning about unsafe actions (confirmation prompts when you are adding an unlisted token to swap). So uneducated users would really have to go out of their way to get scammed through there. Like having to go out of their way to follow up on a solicitation from something caught in a Gmail spam filter.
      • runnerup 4y ago
        As much as If genuinely like a marketplace for shitcoin/scamcoins that I can gamble on and hope to beat the exit dump crash, I admit that uneducated consumers protections probably should trump my desires to participate in this gambles.
• synu 4y ago
  97% of the tokens are scams so it is safe to use? Or am I misunderstanding your point?
  • Sargos 4y ago
    If you go to Uniswap right now you won't see any of these tokens. You run no risk of getting scammed by using Uniswap unless you go out of your way and manually add them.
    • ethanbond 4y ago
      Which you have to do to use Uniswap, right?
      • eswat 4y ago
        No. Uniswap will display the Uniswap Labs default list from Token Lists[0], which covers a lot of the legitmate tokens. Token Lists has additional lists from other protocols if you want to expand the listings. Unless a token is playing a long con (FTT I guess) it’s unlikely to be listed in these. If you want to trade an unlisted token by adding the contract address manually, sure you can do that. But then it’s on you if you get scammed, like if you follow through on a solicitation from a spam email. [0] https://tokenlists.org/ https://tokenlists.org/
    • synu 4y ago
      Looking at the paper abstract, it says the identified scams by looking at transactions. So it seems at least some people are manually adding them and getting scammed. Or are you saying anyone who does that is by definition using Uniswap wrong and shouldn’t be counted as being scammed on Uniswap?
      • Sargos 4y ago
        The paper does not analyze the transactions directly unless I'm missing that piece. There are a number of reasons accounts would interact with the scam tokens such as the scamming group filling up the liquidity pool, creating fake volume to add legitimacy, and other steps to complete the scam. There's also the obvious case of the scammers getting a user to actually buy the token (perhaps through spam email or "pump groups" that give explicit instructions on how to perform the swap) which I'm not saying has never happened but I do claim is more rare. Even the obviously silly scam emails do have the occasional person click on them and lose their money. The upside is that getting scammed on Uniswap is actually harder as you need to manually bypass safety features.
• kareemsabri 4y ago
  How is it misleading it's an accurate statement of the findings of an analysis. Your argument is they won't see those tokens cause they're gonna search out the one they like (and that one won't be a scam?) What they'll conclude reading this is "wow, crypto is full of scams" and be right.
  • Sargos 4y ago
    It's accurate in the sense that "97% of email is scams and phishing" which is a neat fact but doesn't indict email as a failure. Email and Uniswap are both useful tools that are safe to use for even non-technical users. In fact Uniswap is safer as spam filters aren't 100% reliable but Uniswap's lists nearly are.
    • dmak 4y ago
      Great analogy!
  • nuclearnice1 4y ago
    Sargos explained how it’s misleading. > “97% of the tokens are scams so Uniswap is unsafe to use" People are likely to draw the unsafe assumption. Sargos attempted to clarify that some safety is created with filtering via a trusted list.
    • kareemsabri 4y ago
      He explained his argument. I disagreed. My conclusion reading it was, crypto tokens are 98% scams. Uniswap is an exchange. It's a utility, using an open protocol. It's makeup reflects the makeup of the domain.
      • nuclearnice1 4y ago
        You asked how it was misleading. I told you.
• socialismisok 4y ago
  97% of the things available in my vanguard or Charles Schwab aren't scams. It's preposterous to call a marketplace where less then 3% of the offerings are "legit" a safe market to use.
  • Sargos 4y ago
    This misconception is exactly why I made my comment. If you go to Uniswap right now you won't have access to any of these tokens. You are just about as safe as using Charles Schwab.
    • ahMath8 4y ago
    • bluedevil2k 4y ago
      My Schwab account has insurance and oversight…there’s no universe where Uniswap is anywhere close to as safe as Schwab.
      • claudedopplr 4y ago
        Uniswap is open source, and if you use it as an exchange, it doesn't even hold your funds. I'd argue that since your funds are not there, then your funds are safer than with a custodian and insurance. Lehman was also insured, wasn't it?
  • z3c0 4y ago
    Yeah? You can't pick apples from an orange tree either. What do shares of a company/futures/fund have to do with this market in particular? Its a digital marketplace. The digital space is full of attempted scams that never come to fruition, and their presence is no indication of engagement. Is that really that hard to wrap your head around?
  • MarkPNeyer 4y ago
    What percentage of the internet consists of pornography and scams? I’m sure the AOL walled garden had much higher quality content than the internet at large.