SEP-001 Native toml support for Kelp or other bot accounts

[PedityOfficial]

To bring more transparency in market making.

Problem -
Usually in centralized exchanges, market maker use trading bots for providing liquidity, decreasing spread and help in market making which is not a bad thing but trust is less. Centralized exchanges do not share information on where the funds are flowing, who is controlling market etc. SDEX is a great inbuilt feature on stellar which allows every user to explore the transaction using any stellar explorer that allows everyone to see information not shared on centralized exchanges.

Interstellar has recently released a trading bot which solves the purpose on stellar and anyone can use third party trading bots to provide liquidity and stability in market. For general users, it might not be a clear if the token creators are using bots like kelp for helping in market making.

Proposal -
It will be a great initiative from token creators if they announce the bots that is being used for market making in stellar.toml with the addition of MARKET_BOTS="BOTS_ADDRESS"
For our project, we have currently added the Kelp bot as a comment in our stellar.toml but it will be great if it is supported in Native toml.

[theaeolianmachine]

Hi @ghost, could you help explain the intent of adding this to SEP-0001? I'm trying to have a better understanding of why it's valuable for users to know if an issuer is using a bot or not; my sense is even if we add the field, many may not even want to publicly release information about their bot, e.g. it could be more public for attack by negative actors, or they simply don't want to associate themselves with it. And even if it is highly promoted, how does this change a user's experience?

[Pedity-Luffy]

@theaeolianmachine : The reason for adding this information in toml is transparency. Centralized exchanges do not share information on where the funds are flowing, who is controlling market etc. This will reduce the negative attack if it becomes a standard and all trade information is available on block explorer. This will bring a better future for the kelp and other market making bots whose purpose is to maintain spread and not to counter trade the users.

The benefit for user(trader in this case) is trust, it won't change user experience but it will bring more trust in the system as the asset/token issuer is disclosing that the bot is used for helping in maintaining the liquidity and market making. This will allow trader to know that the exchange is not counter trading and system is not against him.

@PedityOfficial account was changed to organization and it converted the account to ghost.

[tattwamasi]

But it doesn’t actually bring any guarantee to the issue right? You can’t know anything from this besides the text in the file. Nothing is enforced or means anything more than, for example, putting it in that comment or putting the claim on a website.
I’m uninvolved and have no particular leaning or vested interest, just trying to understand the value and feature vs. misfeature.

[Pedity-Luffy]

@tattwamasi It will help in raising trust of the asset/token issuer as they are clearly stating the purpose of the bot usage and creating liquidity only and not counter-trading users who own that asset.

Misfeature -
There is no misfeature as the listed account in toml is on blockchain and since all information is on public blockchain, people can verify if the asset/token issuer is involved in malpractices. Issuer is not enforcing anything by adding a line in toml but it is giving information about the account that is used in trading.

Feature -
The main objective of this SEP proposal is to increase the level of trust from an issuer to the users/traders of that particular asset and as DEX allows everything on chain, this is will certainly help users/traders understand that the bots are not their to countertrade but to increase liquidity, reducing spread on buy/sell and help market making.