17 ms·

Open Bazaar – decentralized Bitcoin marketplace

403 points by amingilani 9y ago

hdhzy 9y ago
I can't find details on dispute resolution. Are they using multisig escrow transactions like Silk Road?
- jstanley 9y ago
  You can choose an escrow agent at checkout time, or alternatively pay the merchant directly and take your chances. I bought something off OpenBazaar just to try it out, I paid the merchant directly and the item arrived promptly. It was a positive experience and I'd use it more if there was more stuff available that I wanted to buy.
- rhu86 9y ago
  I'm fairly sure Silk Road never offered multisig transactions. Here's a (fairly old) blog post describing how escrow works in OpenBazaar: https://blog.openbazaar.org/how-moderators-and-dispute-resolution-work-in-openbazaar/ https://blog.openbazaar.org/how-moderators-and-dispute-resol...
omarchowdhury 9y ago
In the crypto-darknet community, the word is that this is where the drug trade is going to move to after the recent busts of the past weeks.
- aphextron 9y ago
  How pleasant
  - johndevor 9y ago
    Better than in the streets.
    - matthewbauer 9y ago
      I think that's certainly debatable.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - vectorpush 9y ago
      People who buy drugs "in the streets" generally aren't versed in how to acquire and manage cryptocurrency. Most people buying drugs have a personal relationship with a dealer and don't do transactions "in the streets". Additionally, actually acquiring cryptocurrency requires a bank account in good standing and a ton of invasive KYC paperwork which will raise suspicions and alienate "street buyers". Finally, in my personal opinion, a street transaction would be preferable to giving out my address to anonymous dealers on the internet, but I know some may agree on that point.
      - jstanley 9y ago
        > Additionally, actually acquiring cryptocurrency requires a bank account in good standing and a ton of invasive KYC paperwork which will raise suspicions and alienate "street buyers". This is false. You can acquire cryptocurrency just as easily as you can acquire cash: sell things for it, exchange currency with friends, exchange currency with people you find on LocalBitcoins, steal it, run a business taking payment in it, ...
        sillysaurus3 9y ago
        There are even bitcoin ATMs that make it trivial.
        nowarninglabel 9y ago
        Not disagreeing, but just to test this a bit. I'm in San Francisco. What's the safest and easiest way for me to go acquire Bitcoin or Ethereum right now? Note, I don't have a credit card.
symlinkk 9y ago
It's not anonymous at all right now. I believe they're working on Tor support for the future however.
- wuliwong 9y ago
  how bout this? https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-go/pull/342 https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-go/pull/342 A PR for "Tor"
  - SamPatt 9y ago
    That's in the 2.0 version (about to launch), but the current version doesn't support Tor.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- tylersmith 9y ago
  Our next major version has Tor support.
  - bubblethink 9y ago
    What does TOR add to this ? I would assume that all traffic between peers is encrypted, right ? Also, for physical goods, you anyway need an address. IP anonymity can be useful for digital goods and a layer of plausible deniability I guess.
    - SamPatt 9y ago
      Traffic is end to end encrypted, but since all nodes are self-hosted (or run on a VPS) Tor gives some privacy. It also protects against denial of service attacks.
SpeakMouthWords 9y ago
How does the unit economics work here? To my understanding, BTC (even after SegWit) has non-negligible transaction fees. Is this site just eating into VC money to make things feeless?
- mtgx 9y ago
  I think it just means no "eBay-like fees". There should still be Bitoin transaction fees. > OpenBazaar costs nothing to download and use. There are no fees to list items, and no fees when an item is sold. Because the trade is p2p (peer to peer), it’s happening directly between buyers and sellers with no middleman to take a cut from each sale. It’s completely free e-commerce. https://www.openbazaar.org/features/ https://www.openbazaar.org/features/
- wmf 9y ago
  I'm sure you still have to pay Bitcoin transaction fees. They should really say that there are no additional fees to use Open Bazaar since it is open source.
  - xur17 9y ago
    They should really move to Ethereum. I have regularly been paying ~$0.01 for transactions that verify in under a minute.
    - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
      > They should really move to Ethereum. The project is opensource. If you feel there are features that you would like to have in it, I'm sure they will appreciate your input to the project.
- jstanley 9y ago
  OpenBazaar is a peer-to-peer marketplace. There are no fees for using the software. Of course you still have to pay BTC transaction fees.
- SamPatt 9y ago
avaer 9y ago
> How are there no fees and restrictions? _Someone_ is paying the TX fees. Who? It can't be a single party, especially the developers, without betraying the decentralization. > Pay with 50+ cryptocurrencies on OpenBazaar: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Zcash, Dash, etc. Seller receives payment in Bitcoin How does this work without a middleman or central party?
- ddon 9y ago
  TX fees are paid to miners. Currency conversions are probably done using ShapeShift https://shapeshift.io/ https://shapeshift.io/
  - avaer 9y ago
    Hm, if that's indeed the case then this is free, feeless and decentralized only to the depth of its landing page.
    - jstanley 9y ago
      What part of it do you think is not decentralised? And how would you propose they implement the system in such a way that Bitcoin miners are incentivised to include fee-less transactions? In terms of fee structure, it is quite clearly an improvement over centralised marketplaces. OpenBazaar is not charging any fees.
      - avaer 9y ago
        If e.g. Shapeshift can walk away with my money when they feel like it, that's not decentralized. If the law can kill off Shapeshift for shady transactions and not following sufficient KYC protocol, that's not decentralized. I'm not sure how to solve the problem of Bitcoin transaction fees. Much, much smarter people than me haven't. But I'm also not promoting a Bitcoin service with "no transaction fees". And I'm not sure I agree that this is an improvement over centralized markets. With those I can buy escrow and some amount of assurance I'm not being swindled by the platform itself, which the platform is on the hook for legally.
blairanderson 9y ago
Shouldn't need to be said, this does not remove fees from BTC/Ether transactions. The feature is that it does not ADD fees to use the platform.
Xeoncross 9y ago
Nothing is free, so here are my brief ideas for funding this: - Ads - "premium features" for sellers - "promoted" sellers - Fees for those that want to be "Secure Escrow and Dispute Resolution" accounts
- contingencies 9y ago
  According to https://www.openbazaar.org/about/ https://www.openbazaar.org/about/ They founded a company, OB1, with a $1 million venture capital investment from Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. [...] OB1 received a second round of investment for $3 million in the fall of 2016. OK, so just to clarify, this is a for-profit project produced by a central party with no stated plan for monetization. That is IMHO dubious. Their website http://ob1.io/ http://ob1.io/ includes a couple of hints as to how profits may be eventually sought: a search engine for Open Bazaar and a cloud based Open Bazaar store launching service. Then there is the fact a small cabal have probably premined all the easily obtainable coins (SYSPOOL, Give Me Coins, F2Pool), which means if the value goes up they profit handsomely. Note that http://ob1.io/about.html http://ob1.io/about.html lists some more investors: BlueYard Capital, Digital Currency Group and William Mougayar.
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago
    Sometimes VCs fund things they want to exist independently of whether they'll make a profit. $4M is spare change for a fund. I'm not sure that's the case here, but "no obvious way to make money" isn't exclusionary when it comes to the VC funding model.
    - jstanley 9y ago
      An added bonus is that once the software is written, it can continue to work without the involvement of OB1, even if they run out of money and disappear, and even if they turn rogue and start trying to extract fees from every transaction. It's an open source, decentralised, peer-to-peer system. As long as the peers want to keep using it, they can keep using it.
optimalsolver 9y ago
What's the point if it doesn't support Tor or some other anonymizing service?
- icebraining 9y ago
  It seems it does, as of this year: https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-go/pull/342 https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-go/pull/342
  - optimalsolver 9y ago
    I stand corrected. Wish this project the best.
  - SamPatt 9y ago
    The current version actually doesn't, but the 2.0 version launching soon does work with Tor.
- jstanley 9y ago
  Because there's value in a peer-to-peer marketplace even if you're not anonymous? One step at a time.
jasode 9y ago
Seems to be some confusion... To clarify OpenBazaar's "No Transaction Fees", it means there are no marketplace platform fees. To compare with ebay, to sell an item for $500 and charge $20 for shipping ($520): - eBay fee: ~10% of final bid value + 10% of any shipping charge added on = $52 - PayPal fee: 2.9% of payment = $15.08 The bitcoin network would eliminate the PayPal fees. (The bitcoin fees would still exist but presumably would be lower than 2.9%) The OpenBazaar platform would eliminate the eBay platform fees.
- abrkn 9y ago
  It is a good idea to pay someone for escrow services.
  - mhluongo 9y ago
    IIRC OpenBazaar still has paid escrow- it's just cheaper than eBay's fees.
    - mahyarm 9y ago
      The escrow fees are only charged if there is a dispute too.
    - ghevshoo 9y ago
      Only in the case of a disputed between the buyer and seller where arbitrage is needed.
      - mhluongo 9y ago
        Good point! By the way the term is arbitration- arbitrage is a different thing
      - jnordwick 9y ago
        arbitration
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
dang 9y ago
Some previous discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=openbazaar%20points%3E15&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=openbazaar%20points%3E15&sort=...
notindexed 9y ago
Don't wanna be the partypooper but Blockmarket wins the dex marketplace niche ;-) http://syscoin.org/ http://syscoin.org/
- tylersmith 9y ago
  There's no reason for a p2p marketplace to be tied to certain medium of exchange or to use a blockchain for anything else but identity and reputation.
ultim8k 9y ago
This is huge!
acover 9y ago
How does this work? Where is the store list stored?
- jstanley 9y ago
  It is distributed over a peer-to-peer network.
  - acover 9y ago
    They mention ipfs. Ipfs doesn't have a method of multiple people writing to one key. How do they tackle this problem? Edit: thanks in advance. I reached my time cap trying to find out
    - tylersmith 9y ago
      When a vendor creates a listing it's created as an ipfs file. Vistors download and seed them and we've added broadcasting so when you update your store changes will be pushed out to willing nodes preemptively.
      - aboodman 9y ago
        Is there an architectural diagram or a protocol flow somewhere? I would love to understand the lifecycle of a listing. In particular, I'm curious if in effect every client has to find, download, validate, and index every listing. And how far you expect that to scale.
- olegkikin 9y ago
  https://blog.openbazaar.org/decentralized-reputation-in-openbazaar/ https://blog.openbazaar.org/decentralized-reputation-in-open...
matthewbauer 9y ago
Am I the only one here that gets a little terrified by this kind of thing? I mean I'm fine if they're just selling recreational drugs. But, we all know that there are much worse things people will be selling on these crypto markets than just plain old LSD and marijuana. Can we find a way to help law enforcement police at the very least the really, really bad stuff?
- larvaetron 9y ago
  You could start OpenBauer - decentralized Bitcoin marketplace for stuff that matthewbauer approves of.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  You're not the only one. These services have destroyed peoples' lives by providing them easy access to coke, meth, and heroin. Contrary to opinion, the vast majority of these people would not have found those drugs in the streets. There are no easy solutions here, but it's false to claim that these services are inherently better than what came before. They may make it safer to acquire the drugs, but they also make it much easier to do so. I don't think we should lock people up for possessing these drugs, but an unregulated marketplace with easy access to a Willy Wonka factory of narcotics is deeply troubling.
  - jstanley 9y ago
    OpenBazaar isn't a darknet market. It's a decentralised peer-to-peer market.
    - sillysaurus3 9y ago
      If people are getting crack from it, does it matter what type of market it is? People are saying this is where the drug trade might migrate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14828864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14828864 I think it's scary that (a) these markets are here to stay, and (b) anyone with a computer and the most basic technology skills will be able to get any hard drug they can imagine delivered right to their doorstep. Again, there's nothing to be done, really. That's just the way the world is now. But it's unfortunate.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dghughes 9y ago
Ah the good ole days when I had $5 in my wallet and paid by taking the $5 note out and handing it to the cashier.
hellbanner 9y ago
Hello, I am looking for a decentralized store that lets me: * Host digital goods (like run a server, or issue an asset ID that can be redeemed on a bittorrent style network for the file download) * Receive payment > register an asset or return a download key to the account of the user who sent it. I want automated digital good downloading, paying & receiving BTC. (Bitpay, Stripe etc pay in BTC but seller receives $Currency)
- webkike 9y ago
  This comment isn't relevant. Also, dude, you're gonna get caught up by the feds so fast.
  - hellbanner 9y ago
    How is this not relevant? "decentralized bitcoin marketplace". I want to sell digital goods (games) for BTC and receive BTC. And where did I say anything about avoiding taxes?
    - webkike 9y ago
      You are not contributing to a discussion, you are asking for a service. Also I didn't imply you are trying to avoid taxes. You suggested that yourself.
      - hellbanner 9y ago
        Then what was your "feds catch up" about if not avoiding taxes?
        webkike 9y ago
        Anything. Selling drugs, for example. You are implicating yourself. Stop.
      - hellbanner 9y ago
        I'm trying to sell video games.
bobsgame 9y ago
It's just like Napster->Kazaa->Gnutella all over again! In 10 years there will be iTunes.
- eternauta3k 9y ago
  In what sense? This is not a file sharing platform. Also, money is exchanged here.
  - erikb 9y ago
    In the sense that it's not clear how openbazaar developers will earn money.
    - olegkikin 9y ago
      They can add the fees later, when (if) it gets popular. If the fees are low enough, forking it would be too much hassle.
      - tylersmith 9y ago
        As an OB dev myself, I could and would remove any amount of built in fees. We can make money providing services to users without rent seeking from everyone.
        erikb 9y ago
        Yes, but you probably agree that putting ethics above money means there's a higher risk of losing the long term game in a capitalist world.
        jpetso 9y ago
        Funnily enough, putting money over ethics also presents a high risk of losing the long term game... if your long term goal is to end up with something user-centric and ethical.
vit05 9y ago
People are talking about drugs or questioning that it is not exactly for free. But my big question, from the point of view of someone who has owned a small online store, is security for the buyer. In a completely p2p transaction, the biggest difficulty lies in the assurances that the two parties are completely satisfied with the deal. The first purchase is the most important move in any market, paying a premium so that everything goes well is not so bad.
- SamPatt 9y ago
  There is a built-in escrow, which uses Bitcoin 2-of-3 multisignature. This means that if both buyer and seller are happy, they are the only two of three parties needed to release funds, but if either of the parties is unhappy they can bring in the escrow party. Escrow is provided on a marketplace as well, anyone can act as an escrow agent.
  - vit05 9y ago
    Sounds cool, I just read the explanation, it's on the Features tab. But in the gif it is showing that you will have to pay for it, and it will be a % of the total business. Similar to what already occurs in other markets. But, as it will depend on a person, not a company, what is the legal responsibility of that third person in the deal? Will these people have a profile or decision history so you can decide who to trust? And are they responsible for the quality of the product or just to ensure that people will receive their product?
    - cpacia 9y ago
      > But in the gif it is showing that you will have to pay for it Only if the escrow resolves a dispute. The escrow agent doesn't actually learn of the transaction if all goes well. As to the rest of the questions, the arbitration is a bit ad hoc at the moment. The vendor selects the escrow agent he's willing to use and offers that as part of a "bundle" with product. If the buyer doesn't know the escrow agent or doesn't trust him then he should not buy. Obviously, having reputable escrow agents will be critical and there currently isn't any good in-app way of evaluating the reputation of the escrow. Currently people tend to bring their reputations in from other platforms and use other platforms to recommend trusted escrows.
bigbass1 9y ago
Dont know why this is even being discuss just use syscoin with VPN,TOR and ZEC and your sorted and everything is on the blockchain no servers to be traced. This is the setup https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/5s63o3/guide_syscoin_tor_setup_fully_decentralized/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/5s63o3/guid...
bigbass1 9y ago
Dont know why this is even being discuss just use syscoin with VPN,TOR and ZEC and your sorted and everything is on the blockchain no servers to be traced
bigbass1 9y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/5s63o3/guide_syscoin_tor_setup_fully_decentralized/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/5s63o3/guid...
mike-cardwell 9y ago
Installed. Run. First screen: Select your language. English already selected. Hit "Next". Nothing happens. No apparent way of actually selecting a language or proceeding. Uninstalled.
- jesalg 9y ago
  Ran into this same issue. Peeked into the developer tools window. Looks like a bug in: onboardingModal.js:177 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'css' of undefined Had to change line 177 to this so I can move forward: var oldPos = 0//parseInt(this.accWin.css('left').replace("px", "")),
  - noloblo 9y ago
    I got this weird error too in my mac
- SamPatt 9y ago
  Sorry about that, we're looking into it now.
- lifeisaninbox 9y ago
  same issue here
- exadeci 9y ago
  Give it the time to connect to the network... Look at the bar at the bottom
  - tom_mellior 9y ago
    Didn't see a bar at the bottom, but this seems to have been it. I opened it, wandered off for an hour, and it worked afterwards.
Dowwie 9y ago
Chris If I understood the docs correctly, openbazaar 1.0 server is written in Python but since it's release the team has worked on V2 in Go. I'd really appreciate learning the motivation for the migration to Go and think others may as well. Go programs are faster than Python programs but lo and behold is a viable v1 - a server whose performance may have been good enough? Please, enlighten!
- cpacia 9y ago
  1.0 is a bit of an MVP. While there's tons of room for optimization, Go is still much faster. That plus the fact that the main IPFS codebase is written in Go were the main considerations.
  - Dowwie 9y ago
    Thanks for the response! So the choice wasn't driven as much by actual performance issues, that might have been solved with refactoring, re-engineering, or simply running through pypy. The catalyst was the adoption of an IPFS library written in Go.
SamPatt 9y ago
I work on OpenBazaar and I'm happy to answer questions. This website links to the current version of OpenBazaar, but we're just about to launch a completely new version, which you can read about here: https://medium.com/openbazaarproject/openbazaar-2-0-p2p-trade-takes-the-next-step-4d75b7f23ec8 https://medium.com/openbazaarproject/openbazaar-2-0-p2p-trad... The 2.0 is built with Go and uses IPFS. It's open source and we welcome any developers into the project: https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-go https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-go
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  Since you have merged PRs allowing use via Tor, you seem to be tacitly encouraging Open Bazaar to be used by those who want to hide their identity. In the wake of the recent darknet market closures, people have been saying that the drug trade might move to decentralized markets like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14828864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14828864 As facilitators of this technology, do you have an opinion on how it should be used? Are you concerned that the primary use case might be to acquire drugs? And are there any controls in place to encourage or discourage certain types of items from being bought and sold on this platform, or is it a complete free-for-all?
  - SamPatt 9y ago
    Keep in mind that OpenBazaar has been used for over a year now, and only a small minority of the trade has been illicit. Most people just want a platform where they can buy / sell in crypto and avoid marketplace fees. We built OpenBazaar to be an agnostic protocol for trade online. It's like any other protocol in that it's neutral, and people can use it how they please. I don't like the idea of people using it for immoral things, but that's their decision. I know linking to a reddit thread might be heresy here, but I talked about the more on our subreddit (I'm CC_EF_JTF): https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBazaar/comments/6oi2k0/rules_of_open_bazaar/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBazaar/comments/6oi2k0/rules_of...
    - sillysaurus3 9y ago
phaed 9y ago
Would like to see a sellers API / webhooks for automation.
thepolice77 9y ago
Are you hackers?
kepler 9y ago
Seems interesting but I couldn't get pass the language setup on Mac.
- SamPatt 9y ago
  We've gotten a few reports of this now, we're looking into it.
davidgerard 9y ago
Does this version still require the vendor to keep their PC online 24/7?
- tylersmith 9y ago
  2.0, which is not yet released but coming soon, does not require an always-on connection anymore.
strictlyCrypto 9y ago
Is there a business model? Compensation for continued development?
strictlyCrypto 9y ago
Is there a business model? Compensation for continued development?
mkj 9y ago
Is there currently a plan how the OB company will make money?
HirojaShibe 9y ago
I cannot wait for 2.0 it has been a longtime coming.
erlend_sh 9y ago
What's the business model for openbazaar.org, i.e. the core team? How are you going to sustain development?
headmelted 9y ago
Aaaannnnndddd..... Silk Road has re-launched. I actually think technologically this looks like quite the achievement, but it's hard for me to see this being used at all for legal commerce. It's just so much of an audience barrier to trade exclusively in cryptocurrencies. I like the use of Multisig though. Nice touch.
InfamousGeek 9y ago
How do they make money? Are they a non-profit (dot org)? Even if they are, they need funds to run the business, right? Where do these funds come from?
ycui1986 9y ago
Not sure if anyone used Open Bazaar on Hacker News. I tried it and forget to close it. After 24-hours, this program leaked 4GB memory. How could the developer let this happen?

403 points by amingilani 9y ago

hdhzy 9y ago

I can't find details on dispute resolution. Are they using multisig escrow transactions like Silk Road?

jstanley 9y ago
You can choose an escrow agent at checkout time, or alternatively pay the merchant directly and take your chances. I bought something off OpenBazaar just to try it out, I paid the merchant directly and the item arrived promptly. It was a positive experience and I'd use it more if there was more stuff available that I wanted to buy.
rhu86 9y ago
I'm fairly sure Silk Road never offered multisig transactions. Here's a (fairly old) blog post describing how escrow works in OpenBazaar: https://blog.openbazaar.org/how-moderators-and-dispute-resolution-work-in-openbazaar/ https://blog.openbazaar.org/how-moderators-and-dispute-resol...

omarchowdhury 9y ago

In the crypto-darknet community, the word is that this is where the drug trade is going to move to after the recent busts of the past weeks.

aphextron 9y ago
How pleasant
- johndevor 9y ago
  Better than in the streets.
  - matthewbauer 9y ago
    I think that's certainly debatable.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - vectorpush 9y ago
    People who buy drugs "in the streets" generally aren't versed in how to acquire and manage cryptocurrency. Most people buying drugs have a personal relationship with a dealer and don't do transactions "in the streets". Additionally, actually acquiring cryptocurrency requires a bank account in good standing and a ton of invasive KYC paperwork which will raise suspicions and alienate "street buyers". Finally, in my personal opinion, a street transaction would be preferable to giving out my address to anonymous dealers on the internet, but I know some may agree on that point.
    - jstanley 9y ago
      > Additionally, actually acquiring cryptocurrency requires a bank account in good standing and a ton of invasive KYC paperwork which will raise suspicions and alienate "street buyers". This is false. You can acquire cryptocurrency just as easily as you can acquire cash: sell things for it, exchange currency with friends, exchange currency with people you find on LocalBitcoins, steal it, run a business taking payment in it, ...
      - sillysaurus3 9y ago
        There are even bitcoin ATMs that make it trivial.
      - nowarninglabel 9y ago
        Not disagreeing, but just to test this a bit. I'm in San Francisco. What's the safest and easiest way for me to go acquire Bitcoin or Ethereum right now? Note, I don't have a credit card.

symlinkk 9y ago

It's not anonymous at all right now. I believe they're working on Tor support for the future however.

wuliwong 9y ago
how bout this? https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-go/pull/342 https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-go/pull/342 A PR for "Tor"
- SamPatt 9y ago
  That's in the 2.0 version (about to launch), but the current version doesn't support Tor.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tylersmith 9y ago
Our next major version has Tor support.
- bubblethink 9y ago
  What does TOR add to this ? I would assume that all traffic between peers is encrypted, right ? Also, for physical goods, you anyway need an address. IP anonymity can be useful for digital goods and a layer of plausible deniability I guess.
  - SamPatt 9y ago
    Traffic is end to end encrypted, but since all nodes are self-hosted (or run on a VPS) Tor gives some privacy. It also protects against denial of service attacks.

SpeakMouthWords 9y ago

How does the unit economics work here? To my understanding, BTC (even after SegWit) has non-negligible transaction fees. Is this site just eating into VC money to make things feeless?

mtgx 9y ago
I think it just means no "eBay-like fees". There should still be Bitoin transaction fees. > OpenBazaar costs nothing to download and use. There are no fees to list items, and no fees when an item is sold. Because the trade is p2p (peer to peer), it’s happening directly between buyers and sellers with no middleman to take a cut from each sale. It’s completely free e-commerce. https://www.openbazaar.org/features/ https://www.openbazaar.org/features/
wmf 9y ago
I'm sure you still have to pay Bitcoin transaction fees. They should really say that there are no additional fees to use Open Bazaar since it is open source.
- xur17 9y ago
  They should really move to Ethereum. I have regularly been paying ~$0.01 for transactions that verify in under a minute.
  - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
    > They should really move to Ethereum. The project is opensource. If you feel there are features that you would like to have in it, I'm sure they will appreciate your input to the project.
jstanley 9y ago
OpenBazaar is a peer-to-peer marketplace. There are no fees for using the software. Of course you still have to pay BTC transaction fees.
SamPatt 9y ago

avaer 9y ago

> How are there no fees and restrictions? _Someone_ is paying the TX fees. Who? It can't be a single party, especially the developers, without betraying the decentralization. > Pay with 50+ cryptocurrencies on OpenBazaar: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Zcash, Dash, etc. Seller receives payment in Bitcoin How does this work without a middleman or central party?

ddon 9y ago
TX fees are paid to miners. Currency conversions are probably done using ShapeShift https://shapeshift.io/ https://shapeshift.io/
- avaer 9y ago
  Hm, if that's indeed the case then this is free, feeless and decentralized only to the depth of its landing page.
  - jstanley 9y ago
    What part of it do you think is not decentralised? And how would you propose they implement the system in such a way that Bitcoin miners are incentivised to include fee-less transactions? In terms of fee structure, it is quite clearly an improvement over centralised marketplaces. OpenBazaar is not charging any fees.
    - avaer 9y ago
      If e.g. Shapeshift can walk away with my money when they feel like it, that's not decentralized. If the law can kill off Shapeshift for shady transactions and not following sufficient KYC protocol, that's not decentralized. I'm not sure how to solve the problem of Bitcoin transaction fees. Much, much smarter people than me haven't. But I'm also not promoting a Bitcoin service with "no transaction fees". And I'm not sure I agree that this is an improvement over centralized markets. With those I can buy escrow and some amount of assurance I'm not being swindled by the platform itself, which the platform is on the hook for legally.

blairanderson 9y ago

Shouldn't need to be said, this does not remove fees from BTC/Ether transactions. The feature is that it does not ADD fees to use the platform.

Xeoncross 9y ago

Nothing is free, so here are my brief ideas for funding this: - Ads - "premium features" for sellers - "promoted" sellers - Fees for those that want to be "Secure Escrow and Dispute Resolution" accounts

contingencies 9y ago
According to https://www.openbazaar.org/about/ https://www.openbazaar.org/about/ They founded a company, OB1, with a $1 million venture capital investment from Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. [...] OB1 received a second round of investment for $3 million in the fall of 2016. OK, so just to clarify, this is a for-profit project produced by a central party with no stated plan for monetization. That is IMHO dubious. Their website http://ob1.io/ http://ob1.io/ includes a couple of hints as to how profits may be eventually sought: a search engine for Open Bazaar and a cloud based Open Bazaar store launching service. Then there is the fact a small cabal have probably premined all the easily obtainable coins (SYSPOOL, Give Me Coins, F2Pool), which means if the value goes up they profit handsomely. Note that http://ob1.io/about.html http://ob1.io/about.html lists some more investors: BlueYard Capital, Digital Currency Group and William Mougayar.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  Sometimes VCs fund things they want to exist independently of whether they'll make a profit. $4M is spare change for a fund. I'm not sure that's the case here, but "no obvious way to make money" isn't exclusionary when it comes to the VC funding model.
  - jstanley 9y ago
    An added bonus is that once the software is written, it can continue to work without the involvement of OB1, even if they run out of money and disappear, and even if they turn rogue and start trying to extract fees from every transaction. It's an open source, decentralised, peer-to-peer system. As long as the peers want to keep using it, they can keep using it.

optimalsolver 9y ago

What's the point if it doesn't support Tor or some other anonymizing service?

icebraining 9y ago
It seems it does, as of this year: https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-go/pull/342 https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-go/pull/342
- optimalsolver 9y ago
  I stand corrected. Wish this project the best.
- SamPatt 9y ago
  The current version actually doesn't, but the 2.0 version launching soon does work with Tor.
jstanley 9y ago
Because there's value in a peer-to-peer marketplace even if you're not anonymous? One step at a time.

jasode 9y ago

Seems to be some confusion... To clarify OpenBazaar's "No Transaction Fees", it means there are no marketplace platform fees. To compare with ebay, to sell an item for $500 and charge $20 for shipping ($520): - eBay fee: ~10% of final bid value + 10% of any shipping charge added on = $52 - PayPal fee: 2.9% of payment = $15.08 The bitcoin network would eliminate the PayPal fees. (The bitcoin fees would still exist but presumably would be lower than 2.9%) The OpenBazaar platform would eliminate the eBay platform fees.

abrkn 9y ago
It is a good idea to pay someone for escrow services.
- mhluongo 9y ago
  IIRC OpenBazaar still has paid escrow- it's just cheaper than eBay's fees.
  - mahyarm 9y ago
    The escrow fees are only charged if there is a dispute too.
  - ghevshoo 9y ago
    Only in the case of a disputed between the buyer and seller where arbitrage is needed.
    - mhluongo 9y ago
      Good point! By the way the term is arbitration- arbitrage is a different thing
    - jnordwick 9y ago
      arbitration
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

dang 9y ago

Some previous discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=openbazaar%20points%3E15&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=openbazaar%20points%3E15&sort=...

notindexed 9y ago

Don't wanna be the partypooper but Blockmarket wins the dex marketplace niche ;-) http://syscoin.org/ http://syscoin.org/

tylersmith 9y ago
There's no reason for a p2p marketplace to be tied to certain medium of exchange or to use a blockchain for anything else but identity and reputation.

ultim8k 9y ago

This is huge!

acover 9y ago

How does this work? Where is the store list stored?

jstanley 9y ago
It is distributed over a peer-to-peer network.
- acover 9y ago
  They mention ipfs. Ipfs doesn't have a method of multiple people writing to one key. How do they tackle this problem? Edit: thanks in advance. I reached my time cap trying to find out
  - tylersmith 9y ago
    When a vendor creates a listing it's created as an ipfs file. Vistors download and seed them and we've added broadcasting so when you update your store changes will be pushed out to willing nodes preemptively.
    - aboodman 9y ago
      Is there an architectural diagram or a protocol flow somewhere? I would love to understand the lifecycle of a listing. In particular, I'm curious if in effect every client has to find, download, validate, and index every listing. And how far you expect that to scale.
olegkikin 9y ago
https://blog.openbazaar.org/decentralized-reputation-in-openbazaar/ https://blog.openbazaar.org/decentralized-reputation-in-open...

matthewbauer 9y ago

Am I the only one here that gets a little terrified by this kind of thing? I mean I'm fine if they're just selling recreational drugs. But, we all know that there are much worse things people will be selling on these crypto markets than just plain old LSD and marijuana. Can we find a way to help law enforcement police at the very least the really, really bad stuff?

larvaetron 9y ago
You could start OpenBauer - decentralized Bitcoin marketplace for stuff that matthewbauer approves of.
sillysaurus3 9y ago
You're not the only one. These services have destroyed peoples' lives by providing them easy access to coke, meth, and heroin. Contrary to opinion, the vast majority of these people would not have found those drugs in the streets. There are no easy solutions here, but it's false to claim that these services are inherently better than what came before. They may make it safer to acquire the drugs, but they also make it much easier to do so. I don't think we should lock people up for possessing these drugs, but an unregulated marketplace with easy access to a Willy Wonka factory of narcotics is deeply troubling.
- jstanley 9y ago
  OpenBazaar isn't a darknet market. It's a decentralised peer-to-peer market.
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago
    If people are getting crack from it, does it matter what type of market it is? People are saying this is where the drug trade might migrate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14828864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14828864 I think it's scary that (a) these markets are here to stay, and (b) anyone with a computer and the most basic technology skills will be able to get any hard drug they can imagine delivered right to their doorstep. Again, there's nothing to be done, really. That's just the way the world is now. But it's unfortunate.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

dghughes 9y ago

Ah the good ole days when I had $5 in my wallet and paid by taking the $5 note out and handing it to the cashier.

hellbanner 9y ago

Hello, I am looking for a decentralized store that lets me: * Host digital goods (like run a server, or issue an asset ID that can be redeemed on a bittorrent style network for the file download) * Receive payment > register an asset or return a download key to the account of the user who sent it. I want automated digital good downloading, paying & receiving BTC. (Bitpay, Stripe etc pay in BTC but seller receives $Currency)

webkike 9y ago
This comment isn't relevant. Also, dude, you're gonna get caught up by the feds so fast.
- hellbanner 9y ago
  How is this not relevant? "decentralized bitcoin marketplace". I want to sell digital goods (games) for BTC and receive BTC. And where did I say anything about avoiding taxes?
  - webkike 9y ago
    You are not contributing to a discussion, you are asking for a service. Also I didn't imply you are trying to avoid taxes. You suggested that yourself.
    - hellbanner 9y ago
      Then what was your "feds catch up" about if not avoiding taxes?
      - webkike 9y ago
        Anything. Selling drugs, for example. You are implicating yourself. Stop.
    - hellbanner 9y ago
      I'm trying to sell video games.

bobsgame 9y ago

It's just like Napster->Kazaa->Gnutella all over again! In 10 years there will be iTunes.

eternauta3k 9y ago
In what sense? This is not a file sharing platform. Also, money is exchanged here.
- erikb 9y ago
  In the sense that it's not clear how openbazaar developers will earn money.
  - olegkikin 9y ago
    They can add the fees later, when (if) it gets popular. If the fees are low enough, forking it would be too much hassle.
    - tylersmith 9y ago
      As an OB dev myself, I could and would remove any amount of built in fees. We can make money providing services to users without rent seeking from everyone.
      - erikb 9y ago
        Yes, but you probably agree that putting ethics above money means there's a higher risk of losing the long term game in a capitalist world.
        jpetso 9y ago
        Funnily enough, putting money over ethics also presents a high risk of losing the long term game... if your long term goal is to end up with something user-centric and ethical.

vit05 9y ago

People are talking about drugs or questioning that it is not exactly for free. But my big question, from the point of view of someone who has owned a small online store, is security for the buyer. In a completely p2p transaction, the biggest difficulty lies in the assurances that the two parties are completely satisfied with the deal. The first purchase is the most important move in any market, paying a premium so that everything goes well is not so bad.

SamPatt 9y ago
There is a built-in escrow, which uses Bitcoin 2-of-3 multisignature. This means that if both buyer and seller are happy, they are the only two of three parties needed to release funds, but if either of the parties is unhappy they can bring in the escrow party. Escrow is provided on a marketplace as well, anyone can act as an escrow agent.
- vit05 9y ago
  Sounds cool, I just read the explanation, it's on the Features tab. But in the gif it is showing that you will have to pay for it, and it will be a % of the total business. Similar to what already occurs in other markets. But, as it will depend on a person, not a company, what is the legal responsibility of that third person in the deal? Will these people have a profile or decision history so you can decide who to trust? And are they responsible for the quality of the product or just to ensure that people will receive their product?
  - cpacia 9y ago
    > But in the gif it is showing that you will have to pay for it Only if the escrow resolves a dispute. The escrow agent doesn't actually learn of the transaction if all goes well. As to the rest of the questions, the arbitration is a bit ad hoc at the moment. The vendor selects the escrow agent he's willing to use and offers that as part of a "bundle" with product. If the buyer doesn't know the escrow agent or doesn't trust him then he should not buy. Obviously, having reputable escrow agents will be critical and there currently isn't any good in-app way of evaluating the reputation of the escrow. Currently people tend to bring their reputations in from other platforms and use other platforms to recommend trusted escrows.

bigbass1 9y ago

Dont know why this is even being discuss just use syscoin with VPN,TOR and ZEC and your sorted and everything is on the blockchain no servers to be traced. This is the setup https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/5s63o3/guide_syscoin_tor_setup_fully_decentralized/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/5s63o3/guid...

bigbass1 9y ago

Dont know why this is even being discuss just use syscoin with VPN,TOR and ZEC and your sorted and everything is on the blockchain no servers to be traced

bigbass1 9y ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/5s63o3/guide_syscoin_tor_setup_fully_decentralized/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/5s63o3/guid...

mike-cardwell 9y ago

Installed. Run. First screen: Select your language. English already selected. Hit "Next". Nothing happens. No apparent way of actually selecting a language or proceeding. Uninstalled.

jesalg 9y ago
Ran into this same issue. Peeked into the developer tools window. Looks like a bug in: onboardingModal.js:177 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'css' of undefined Had to change line 177 to this so I can move forward: var oldPos = 0//parseInt(this.accWin.css('left').replace("px", "")),
- noloblo 9y ago
  I got this weird error too in my mac
SamPatt 9y ago
Sorry about that, we're looking into it now.
lifeisaninbox 9y ago
same issue here
exadeci 9y ago
Give it the time to connect to the network... Look at the bar at the bottom
- tom_mellior 9y ago
  Didn't see a bar at the bottom, but this seems to have been it. I opened it, wandered off for an hour, and it worked afterwards.

Dowwie 9y ago

Chris If I understood the docs correctly, openbazaar 1.0 server is written in Python but since it's release the team has worked on V2 in Go. I'd really appreciate learning the motivation for the migration to Go and think others may as well. Go programs are faster than Python programs but lo and behold is a viable v1 - a server whose performance may have been good enough? Please, enlighten!

cpacia 9y ago
1.0 is a bit of an MVP. While there's tons of room for optimization, Go is still much faster. That plus the fact that the main IPFS codebase is written in Go were the main considerations.
- Dowwie 9y ago
  Thanks for the response! So the choice wasn't driven as much by actual performance issues, that might have been solved with refactoring, re-engineering, or simply running through pypy. The catalyst was the adoption of an IPFS library written in Go.

SamPatt 9y ago

I work on OpenBazaar and I'm happy to answer questions. This website links to the current version of OpenBazaar, but we're just about to launch a completely new version, which you can read about here: https://medium.com/openbazaarproject/openbazaar-2-0-p2p-trade-takes-the-next-step-4d75b7f23ec8 https://medium.com/openbazaarproject/openbazaar-2-0-p2p-trad... The 2.0 is built with Go and uses IPFS. It's open source and we welcome any developers into the project: https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-go https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-go

sillysaurus3 9y ago
Since you have merged PRs allowing use via Tor, you seem to be tacitly encouraging Open Bazaar to be used by those who want to hide their identity. In the wake of the recent darknet market closures, people have been saying that the drug trade might move to decentralized markets like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14828864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14828864 As facilitators of this technology, do you have an opinion on how it should be used? Are you concerned that the primary use case might be to acquire drugs? And are there any controls in place to encourage or discourage certain types of items from being bought and sold on this platform, or is it a complete free-for-all?
- SamPatt 9y ago
  Keep in mind that OpenBazaar has been used for over a year now, and only a small minority of the trade has been illicit. Most people just want a platform where they can buy / sell in crypto and avoid marketplace fees. We built OpenBazaar to be an agnostic protocol for trade online. It's like any other protocol in that it's neutral, and people can use it how they please. I don't like the idea of people using it for immoral things, but that's their decision. I know linking to a reddit thread might be heresy here, but I talked about the more on our subreddit (I'm CC_EF_JTF): https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBazaar/comments/6oi2k0/rules_of_open_bazaar/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBazaar/comments/6oi2k0/rules_of...
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago

phaed 9y ago

Would like to see a sellers API / webhooks for automation.

thepolice77 9y ago

Are you hackers?

kepler 9y ago

Seems interesting but I couldn't get pass the language setup on Mac.

SamPatt 9y ago
We've gotten a few reports of this now, we're looking into it.

davidgerard 9y ago

Does this version still require the vendor to keep their PC online 24/7?

tylersmith 9y ago
2.0, which is not yet released but coming soon, does not require an always-on connection anymore.

strictlyCrypto 9y ago

Is there a business model? Compensation for continued development?

strictlyCrypto 9y ago

Is there a business model? Compensation for continued development?

mkj 9y ago

Is there currently a plan how the OB company will make money?

HirojaShibe 9y ago

I cannot wait for 2.0 it has been a longtime coming.

erlend_sh 9y ago

What's the business model for openbazaar.org, i.e. the core team? How are you going to sustain development?

headmelted 9y ago

Aaaannnnndddd..... Silk Road has re-launched. I actually think technologically this looks like quite the achievement, but it's hard for me to see this being used at all for legal commerce. It's just so much of an audience barrier to trade exclusively in cryptocurrencies. I like the use of Multisig though. Nice touch.

InfamousGeek 9y ago

How do they make money? Are they a non-profit (dot org)? Even if they are, they need funds to run the business, right? Where do these funds come from?

ycui1986 9y ago

Not sure if anyone used Open Bazaar on Hacker News. I tried it and forget to close it. After 24-hours, this program leaked 4GB memory. How could the developer let this happen?