Fair price discovery using GBM

Definitely a lot of interesting suggestions here! We are discussing with the GBM and will give some initial feedback soon.

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As far as I remember we discussed this issue some months ago already in the DAO-discussion channel in discord when the GBM was announced.
From my perspective, if we cannot avoid bots (e.g. similar to how they have been handled during the Land GBM) there is little we can do about a first bid that would always be placed by a bot without creating other issues.

Personally, I think it is important to consider that GBM auctions only really make sense for unique/illiquid assets.
Creating auctions for wearables that have multiple listings on baazaar and a recent sale history just does not make sense. For such auctions, the bots should be able to typically place a rather high first bid that would always generate a revenue.

The auctions are meant for assets that need price discovery (like godlike wearables, non-floor Gotchis or new assets like FAKES, schematics, cores). Everything else should not be considered for a GBM auction.

Given there are only auctions for illiquid assets, the bots do not have much chance to generate a high revenue. Either they just place a really low first bid, or they risk getting rekt (ending up with the asset) if they placed a higher bid.

Even if we get rid of the bots, the first bid and possibly some subsequent bids would also always be placed by the best informed bidders (likely knowing an asset gets listed for an auction before hand / having good insight into current market dynamics / being able to place bids faster than any casual bidder due to predefined high gas cost…).
Just saying the casual bidder we would want to have fun with auctions and get some good revenue would never stand a chance anyways to place a first or even second bid on any asset.

Furthermore, I think one issue with GBM for a seller can be that they are going to pay 20%+ in “fees” for the auction. The smaller the bid increments the worse it gets for them. Having a bot that starts with the “highest possible bid that will be outbid” is an advantage to the seller and will leave less people frustrated after their auction has ended and they realize they are not getting quite the return they hoped for.

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