Anti-gaming provisions
Last-look, Sybil quoting, collusion, wash trades: the threat catalog and what answers each one.
A market is a target. Omnious assumes participants will probe every rule, but it also distinguishes controls that run in the invite-only Beta from Shadow accounting and Proposed collateral. The current answer to each threat is below.
| Threat | The attack | Current answer | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| last look | quote aggressively, then refuse fills you dislike | short-lived signed commitments, recorded faults, measured completion reliability, and operator removal | Beta |
| inflated claims | advertise latency or quality you do not deliver | ranking uses router-measured time to first token, completion reliability, verification trust, and throughput | Beta |
| model substitution | bid one model class, serve a cheaper substitute | measured trust and canary evidence; points-backed review is limited to approved reviewer wallets | Beta + Shadow |
| Sybil quoting | use several identities to manufacture a rival and lift the clear | allowlisted identities, declared operator groups, and independent-group clearing; there is no live collateral stake | Beta |
| collusion | coordinate quotes to lift the clearing price | independent-group rival selection, customer caps, bucketed thin-book disclosure, and published clearing statistics | Beta |
| self-dealing | wash traffic to influence reserves or rewards | self-dealt rows are excluded from reserve observations; unserved or failed rows do not earn; returned authorization overage is outside the final charged-amount basis | Beta + Shadow |
| thin-book pricing | treat related or nonexistent quotes as real competition | a reserve needs independent payer and provider-group samples; otherwise the winner's own ask sets the clear | Beta |
| session hold-up | capture a cache-heavy loop, then reprice it | the award tariff locks for the session; incumbent turns bill the lock and remain contestable on measured effective cost | Beta |
Standing quotes are not sealed bids
The Beta hot path compares short-lived standing quotes already signed by providers. A future live-request RFQ could use a sealed response window, but that mode is Proposed. Customer copy therefore describes the mechanism as a reverse scoring auction, not as a generic sealed-bid auction.
The design stance
The strongest controls change the payoff or remove fake competition: measured service makes unsupported claims useless, independent-group clearing stops related identities setting one another's price, and the session lock removes repricing leverage. Other controls still need an operator in Beta. The receipt discloses which price-setter applied so those boundaries can be audited rather than hidden.
- router/src/market/auction.ts independent-rival clearing, customer cap, reserve, and own-bid cases
- router/src/shared/config.ts service weights and reserve-hardening thresholds
- mechanisms.json canonical status and non-claims