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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 p

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.
- wyck 11y ago
  This is wrong, anyone using openbazaar for darknet reasons will be instantly caught because openbazaar does not support TOR or annonymity in any form. The goal of the developers is simply a marketplace client, which seems misguided.
  - adrusi 11y ago
    I'm sure you can use the tor http proxy like you can with nearly everything else.
    - wyck 11y ago
      Except it works on UDP and not TCP.. TOR does not work on UDP, there are things besides http that exist on the internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite
      - adrusi 11y ago
        Your comment is unnecesarily presumptuous, but regardless... I don't really understand why OpenBazaar would use UDP, and I can't seem to find any information about it, but it looks like they tell server operators to open up both a TCP and UDP port. I guess they might use it for DHT control messages? Their documentation site is down right now, so that's the best I got.
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.

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.
wyck 11y ago
This is wrong, anyone using openbazaar for darknet reasons will be instantly caught because openbazaar does not support TOR or annonymity in any form. The goal of the developers is simply a marketplace client, which seems misguided.
- adrusi 11y ago
  I'm sure you can use the tor http proxy like you can with nearly everything else.
  - wyck 11y ago
    Except it works on UDP and not TCP.. TOR does not work on UDP, there are things besides http that exist on the internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite
    - adrusi 11y ago
      Your comment is unnecesarily presumptuous, but regardless... I don't really understand why OpenBazaar would use UDP, and I can't seem to find any information about it, but it looks like they tell server operators to open up both a TCP and UDP port. I guess they might use it for DHT control messages? Their documentation site is down right now, so that's the best I got.

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.