7 ms·

OpenBazaar is Open for Business

215 points by griffinmb 11y ago

nvk 11y ago
Congrats on the launch! Looking forward to seeing how this social experiment/project plays out.
jerguismi 11y ago
Can anybody summarize the benefits? Too lazy to install the software myself. As I understand, there is an escrow. Is it trustless/multi-sig based? What about privacy/encryption? Can anybody be an escrow agent?
- johndevor 11y ago
  It's cheaper from what I understand.
  - jerguismi 11y ago
    Can the escrow agents determine their own fees?
    - pmorici 11y ago
      Yes, looks like most of them charge between 0 and 2% Compare that to ebay at 10% + 3% to paypal.
- 55555 11y ago
  I think in the long-term their plan is to be a fully decentralized marketplace, like a darknet market which can't be taken down (ofcourse they don't explicitly condone the sale of illegal goods). One of the most impressive parts so far to me is the strong UX though. It feels a bit like browsing instagram+etsy.
- antonios 11y ago
  Anybody can be an escrow agent, yes. Fees are customizeable.
- adrusi 11y ago
  It's like a darknet market (Silk Road, AlphaBay, etc) that can't be taken down by law enforcement. Or it's like a clearnet market (Ebay) that doesn't take a cut and works with bitcoin. It looks like it uses multisig as a form of escrow [1], but the third party isn't in any way affiliated with openbazaar, just whoever the vendor and customer can agree to trust. It looks like users have to find a third party on their own, out-of-band [2]. I can see this working for small vendors, but I don't see how it would work with large vendors without the emergence of 1–3 large escrow services, which would diminish some of the benefits of decentralization. This kind of multisig-based escrow will never be able to compete with Ebay. On Ebay, customers don't realize that they're paying Ebay to be a moderator because it's included in the price tag. On OpenBazaar they will be forced to pay attention to the escrow fee. I also fear that it will be impossible for escrow services to develop the necessary level of trust without being forced on vendors by the marketplace and still compete with the customer-favoring escrow that Ebay has. It competes much better with darknet marketplaces, since it eliminates the possibility of sudden cash-outs or FBI raids on the scales that other markets have seen. They should accept that that's where they'll be successful and integrate some kind of anonymizing layer, probably tor, maybe i2p. [1] https://blog.openbazaar.org/what-is-openbazaar/ https://blog.openbazaar.org/what-is-openbazaar/ [2] https://openbazaar.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/207548366 https://openbazaar.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/207548366
  - brighton36 11y ago
    None of this is true. It's a web browser and server protocol for hosting web sites that can't be crawled by google. It is trivially censored. I have no idea who needs this.
    - griffinmb 11y ago
      I feel like this is partially correct. OB's peer-to-peer nature gives it the spirit of 'uncensorable,' in that no central authority can keep someone from making whatever listings they want. Though, individually, the shops are certainly censorship-prone since everything is clearnet. A lot of people seem to think this is Bitcoin's 'killer app', which I don't agree with. I really can't see it pulling many legitimate users from established centralized companies. But I do think it's an interesting piece of work.
- pmorici 11y ago
  It's p2p ebay with selling and transaction fees close to zero instead of the 13% you would have to kick back to ebay on a typical transaction.
55555 11y ago
Extremely impressive UI. Great work team!
fru2013 11y ago
Cached mirror: https://archive.is/yOB5L https://archive.is/yOB5L
- snowpanda 11y ago
  Thanks, the original link timed out for me.
latj 11y ago
Looks interesting. Are my only options to use root password or compile it myself?
it_learnses 11y ago
how does openbazaar make money? How will the investors recover money and make profit?
- etjossem 11y ago
  $1M in seed funding isn't that much. At the moment, they're receiving donations [1], but it's entirely conceivable they're going for a similar business model to MySQL's original authors: selling support, consulting services, and training for their products. [1] https://blockchain.info/address/3MXYUBLWNETa5HTewZp1xMTt7AW9kbFNqs https://blockchain.info/address/3MXYUBLWNETa5HTewZp1xMTt7AW9...
- skrowl 11y ago
  I couldn't find this answer either. It's difficult to trust someone with large hosting / development / etc costs but no business model. It's not a charity. How do they "keep the lights on" with no fees?
  - pmorici 11y ago
    Why would they have large hosting costs? They don't do anything except have a website where you can download the OpenBazaar software individual stores are self hosted.
- rgbrgb 11y ago
  The network effects of this will be pretty strong if this takes off. If they have a large captive audience of people with their wallets open, ads could be pretty effective/lucrative (and there's no adblocker if they own the browser).
- wentoodeep 11y ago
  Advertisement?
- pmorici 11y ago
  They are probably hoping the marketplace takes off then they will offer hosted stores to merchants who don't want to deal with setting up their own OpenBazaar node.
le0n 11y ago
Panama papers -- <anger> OpenBazaar -- cool!
- fabulist 11y ago
  If you're trying to make a point it is lost on us, but if you elaborated I'd be interested.
- greenrd 11y ago
  AFAIK decentralised Bitcoin transactions are already illegal in the US if none of the parties to the transaction have a money transmitter license - correct me if I'm wrong.
  - paavokoya 11y ago
    You're COMPLETELY wrong... like extremely wrong. Bitcoin transactions between peers have always been legal. Conversion of USD - Bitcoin over something like $5000/year needs a MSL
lolidaisuki 11y ago
"Open" All of the development and communication of this "decentralized" "free software" project happens on Slack, a centralized proprietary service. I've had to tell the sad news about this to far too many people on their IRC channel so far. And then there is them using GitHub as well. OpenBazaar people are huge hypocrites.
Shenxi 11y ago
Looks interesting. Is it essential to their goals that it be a separate app? I wonder why it's not just a website.
- SuddsMcDuff 11y ago
  But then it wouldn't be decentralized

215 points by griffinmb 11y ago

nvk 11y ago

Congrats on the launch! Looking forward to seeing how this social experiment/project plays out.

Can anybody summarize the benefits? Too lazy to install the software myself. As I understand, there is an escrow. Is it trustless/multi-sig based? What about privacy/encryption? Can anybody be an escrow agent?

johndevor 11y ago
It's cheaper from what I understand.
- jerguismi 11y ago
  Can the escrow agents determine their own fees?
  - pmorici 11y ago
    Yes, looks like most of them charge between 0 and 2% Compare that to ebay at 10% + 3% to paypal.
55555 11y ago
I think in the long-term their plan is to be a fully decentralized marketplace, like a darknet market which can't be taken down (ofcourse they don't explicitly condone the sale of illegal goods). One of the most impressive parts so far to me is the strong UX though. It feels a bit like browsing instagram+etsy.
antonios 11y ago
Anybody can be an escrow agent, yes. Fees are customizeable.
adrusi 11y ago
It's like a darknet market (Silk Road, AlphaBay, etc) that can't be taken down by law enforcement. Or it's like a clearnet market (Ebay) that doesn't take a cut and works with bitcoin. It looks like it uses multisig as a form of escrow [1], but the third party isn't in any way affiliated with openbazaar, just whoever the vendor and customer can agree to trust. It looks like users have to find a third party on their own, out-of-band [2]. I can see this working for small vendors, but I don't see how it would work with large vendors without the emergence of 1–3 large escrow services, which would diminish some of the benefits of decentralization. This kind of multisig-based escrow will never be able to compete with Ebay. On Ebay, customers don't realize that they're paying Ebay to be a moderator because it's included in the price tag. On OpenBazaar they will be forced to pay attention to the escrow fee. I also fear that it will be impossible for escrow services to develop the necessary level of trust without being forced on vendors by the marketplace and still compete with the customer-favoring escrow that Ebay has. It competes much better with darknet marketplaces, since it eliminates the possibility of sudden cash-outs or FBI raids on the scales that other markets have seen. They should accept that that's where they'll be successful and integrate some kind of anonymizing layer, probably tor, maybe i2p. [1] https://blog.openbazaar.org/what-is-openbazaar/ https://blog.openbazaar.org/what-is-openbazaar/ [2] https://openbazaar.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/207548366 https://openbazaar.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/207548366
- brighton36 11y ago
  None of this is true. It's a web browser and server protocol for hosting web sites that can't be crawled by google. It is trivially censored. I have no idea who needs this.
  - griffinmb 11y ago
    I feel like this is partially correct. OB's peer-to-peer nature gives it the spirit of 'uncensorable,' in that no central authority can keep someone from making whatever listings they want. Though, individually, the shops are certainly censorship-prone since everything is clearnet. A lot of people seem to think this is Bitcoin's 'killer app', which I don't agree with. I really can't see it pulling many legitimate users from established centralized companies. But I do think it's an interesting piece of work.
pmorici 11y ago
It's p2p ebay with selling and transaction fees close to zero instead of the 13% you would have to kick back to ebay on a typical transaction.

55555 11y ago

Extremely impressive UI. Great work team!

fru2013 11y ago

Cached mirror: https://archive.is/yOB5L https://archive.is/yOB5L

snowpanda 11y ago
Thanks, the original link timed out for me.

latj 11y ago

Looks interesting. Are my only options to use root password or compile it myself?

it_learnses 11y ago

how does openbazaar make money? How will the investors recover money and make profit?

etjossem 11y ago
$1M in seed funding isn't that much. At the moment, they're receiving donations [1], but it's entirely conceivable they're going for a similar business model to MySQL's original authors: selling support, consulting services, and training for their products. [1] https://blockchain.info/address/3MXYUBLWNETa5HTewZp1xMTt7AW9kbFNqs https://blockchain.info/address/3MXYUBLWNETa5HTewZp1xMTt7AW9...
skrowl 11y ago
I couldn't find this answer either. It's difficult to trust someone with large hosting / development / etc costs but no business model. It's not a charity. How do they "keep the lights on" with no fees?
- pmorici 11y ago
  Why would they have large hosting costs? They don't do anything except have a website where you can download the OpenBazaar software individual stores are self hosted.
rgbrgb 11y ago
The network effects of this will be pretty strong if this takes off. If they have a large captive audience of people with their wallets open, ads could be pretty effective/lucrative (and there's no adblocker if they own the browser).
wentoodeep 11y ago
Advertisement?
pmorici 11y ago
They are probably hoping the marketplace takes off then they will offer hosted stores to merchants who don't want to deal with setting up their own OpenBazaar node.

le0n 11y ago

Panama papers -- <anger> OpenBazaar -- cool!

fabulist 11y ago
If you're trying to make a point it is lost on us, but if you elaborated I'd be interested.
greenrd 11y ago
AFAIK decentralised Bitcoin transactions are already illegal in the US if none of the parties to the transaction have a money transmitter license - correct me if I'm wrong.
- paavokoya 11y ago
  You're COMPLETELY wrong... like extremely wrong. Bitcoin transactions between peers have always been legal. Conversion of USD - Bitcoin over something like $5000/year needs a MSL

lolidaisuki 11y ago

"Open" All of the development and communication of this "decentralized" "free software" project happens on Slack, a centralized proprietary service. I've had to tell the sad news about this to far too many people on their IRC channel so far. And then there is them using GitHub as well. OpenBazaar people are huge hypocrites.

Shenxi 11y ago

Looks interesting. Is it essential to their goals that it be a separate app? I wonder why it's not just a website.

SuddsMcDuff 11y ago
But then it wouldn't be decentralized