Dealing with duplicate tickers

What is the Cardano Foundation’s policy regarding duplicate tickers? I had the understanding that tickers from the ITN would be recognized/protected from copycats.

Thank you.

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Tickers, pool names and the pool description aren’t unique. This is deliberate, it’s done to prevent “ticker squatting”, where people reserve popular ticker names just in case, like they do with domain names on the Internet.

The only unique identifier is the pool ID, which pool operators are encouraged to publish on their website or on social media. This is an example of a stake pool ID: d9812f8d30b5db4b03e5b76cfd242db9cd2763da4671ed062be808a0

The Stakepool Metadata Aggregation Server (SMASH) is a service that’s under development, this will make it possible to filter out reused ticker names that established pools are already using.

All of this is described in this video, at the 6:32 mark: IOHK – Delegating in Daedalus: an introduction – YouTube

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Thanks @Chris-Graffagnino for bringing this from Telegram to the forum. From my knowledge it is still unclear who curates which smash database and which curated database will end up in Daedalus. (I would imagine that this would even be selectable)

We should update this thread as soon as new information is available. As far as I understood pool operators will be able to generate a proof by signing something with their ITN key.

I just had someone register a duplicate ticker of my pool, and its kind of concerning. My take on this is that there should be some mechanism to protect the tickers. I’ve spent a lot of time, money, and effort trying to build the brand of my Stake Pool. It’s not realistic to have delegates try and decipher the differences between the unique pool IDs since the main method of picking a pool is VIA a ticker. It’s like the difference between a stocks ticker and its CUISP number. Both are unique. I understand the worry about someone trying to register all “good” ticker names. But the reality is that the pool ticker is something that is part of the brand and identity of the pool, and to not work and protect that is damaging to pool owners. Every aspect of society has recognized the need for protecting brand names, its the same thing here. I’ve build branding, sites, on and on, around my pool ticker and now someone else can either destroy it, or benefit from it. IOG wants SPOs to promote Cardano and draw people into the ecosystem. But there is no protection in return to prevent the watering down of the SPOs brand. I think at a very minimum, there should be some sanity check or barrier to entry to duplicate someones ticker. Especially since its basically the only way people search and join pools from the various wallets. I think some people might not even know its a duplicate. I would suggest at a minimum a warning about a duplicate when registering. Maybe even an added fee. Ticker already exists? The fee is 10k and not 500 to register.

10k Ada paid to the OG ticker owner… yes,
I’ll give up BONE for that😄