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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 "

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.
    - hughw 9y ago
      Who's going to maintain the software? Open source projects abandoned by founding companies don't have a stellar track record.
      - jstanley 9y ago
        Open source projects abandoned by founding companies have a better track record than SaaS projects abandoned by founding companies. Anybody who is interested can maintain it. If it has a large number of people actively using it to conduct business on a daily basis, somebody will maintain it. If it's big enough that lack of maintenance would be a problem, it won't be a problem.
      - tylersmith 9y ago
        Most of us were working on OB for free before OB1. If OB1 were to fail I think many of us would continue to work on OB either at another OB-based company or just back on our own.
- uncletammy 9y ago
  > 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. For an early Bitcoin whale, a few million is negligible for a product that could bring crypto to the masses and dramatically increase the value of their crypto investment portfolio.
- tylersmith 9y ago
  OpenBazaar is non-profit project built by multiple for-profit groups. Us at OB1 are just one group. https://duosear.ch https://duosear.ch and https://mubiz.com https://mubiz.com are two others.
  - contingencies 9y ago
    https://duosear.ch https://duosear.ch = another search engine, no about page, domain registered to an individual, just over 1 year old. https://mubiz.com https://mubiz.com = another search engine, very small French company
- SamPatt 9y ago
  OpenBazaar itself is not a for-profit project, and it predates the formation of the OB1 company by a year. OB1 has a plan for monetization (I'm a co-founder!) but OpenBazaar itself is designed as a neutral trade protocol and network that doesn't rely on OB1 at all, other than the majority of developer power is provided by the company at the moment.
SamPatt 9y ago
OpenBazaar is a completely p2p network. Since there's no middleman, there's no infrastructure to pay to maintain. People buy and sell stuff directly with each other, so it really is truly free.
- xya 9y ago
  got the p2p scheme - but at some point investors (Andreesen Horowitz, BlueYard Capital, Union Square Ventures etc.) want to see their returns. I´ve got 3 questions: Question a) How would you define that point, when investors want to sell their shares, regarding open bazaars development, number of users, annual turnover and market share? Question b) How could the network generate those returns but by fees or some sort of future "Exit"? Question c) What is your investors answer to the question "how big could it become?" (please don´t say "next amazon" - I am sure they would buy in before and close it down...)

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.
  - hughw 9y ago
    Who's going to maintain the software? Open source projects abandoned by founding companies don't have a stellar track record.
    - jstanley 9y ago
      Open source projects abandoned by founding companies have a better track record than SaaS projects abandoned by founding companies. Anybody who is interested can maintain it. If it has a large number of people actively using it to conduct business on a daily basis, somebody will maintain it. If it's big enough that lack of maintenance would be a problem, it won't be a problem.
    - tylersmith 9y ago
      Most of us were working on OB for free before OB1. If OB1 were to fail I think many of us would continue to work on OB either at another OB-based company or just back on our own.
uncletammy 9y ago
> 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. For an early Bitcoin whale, a few million is negligible for a product that could bring crypto to the masses and dramatically increase the value of their crypto investment portfolio.
tylersmith 9y ago
OpenBazaar is non-profit project built by multiple for-profit groups. Us at OB1 are just one group. https://duosear.ch https://duosear.ch and https://mubiz.com https://mubiz.com are two others.
- contingencies 9y ago
  https://duosear.ch https://duosear.ch = another search engine, no about page, domain registered to an individual, just over 1 year old. https://mubiz.com https://mubiz.com = another search engine, very small French company
SamPatt 9y ago
OpenBazaar itself is not a for-profit project, and it predates the formation of the OB1 company by a year. OB1 has a plan for monetization (I'm a co-founder!) but OpenBazaar itself is designed as a neutral trade protocol and network that doesn't rely on OB1 at all, other than the majority of developer power is provided by the company at the moment.

SamPatt 9y ago

OpenBazaar is a completely p2p network. Since there's no middleman, there's no infrastructure to pay to maintain. People buy and sell stuff directly with each other, so it really is truly free.

xya 9y ago
got the p2p scheme - but at some point investors (Andreesen Horowitz, BlueYard Capital, Union Square Ventures etc.) want to see their returns. I´ve got 3 questions: Question a) How would you define that point, when investors want to sell their shares, regarding open bazaars development, number of users, annual turnover and market share? Question b) How could the network generate those returns but by fees or some sort of future "Exit"? Question c) What is your investors answer to the question "how big could it become?" (please don´t say "next amazon" - I am sure they would buy in before and close it down...)