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It's fundamentally a problem of trust. Hotels and big brands work because you can trust them. Why do you trust them? Because they have skin in the game. If thei

It's fundamentally a problem of trust. Hotels and big brands work because you can trust them. Why do you trust them? Because they have skin in the game. If their products suck their brand suffers and that's what they want to avoid the most. If Apple releases crappy products they can't just create a new "BtwNotApple" brand. They can sell overpriced products because you're paying for trust/brand. In these semi-anonymous marketplaces you fundamentally don't have trust. There is no skin in the game for sellers since their identity and brand is not sticky. If you get banned or do something against the ToS it's not a big deal. Regulation is a possibility, e.g. make people go to jail, but I doubt that could work on this scale. Or it would make innovation impossible. You need a fundamentally different incentive model.

Fnoord 4y ago
Hmm, I've never used it, but something like Silkroad worked, it did not have trust issues. To me it reads like they try to save pennies on customer support.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  The differences between Silk Road and Airbnb is that the former didn't have lots of investors and techbros to pay returns to, so they could actually offer a fair escrow service and still remain profitable, where as Airbnb has to commit fraud by pitching you an "insurance" service that never actually pays out because doing so would lower or even negate the techbros' returns.
jkepler 4y ago
> It's fundamentally a problem of trust. Absolutely. That's where bitcoin could help a new platform, as a decentralized trust protocol. The bisq.network protocol requires people to put up significant bonds to perform roles that are trusted, and then if they fail to perform well, they can loose some or all of their bond. The bisq token holders (bisq tokens are simply colored satoshis, i.e. they've built functional governance directly on bitcoin) vote monthly on various governance proposals, and can thus hold people doing bonded roles accountable. The tough question is whether such a system could make to individual apartment rentals in the real world. Its an oracle question: how to you establish the truth of competing claimed about the state if an apartment? Not an easy problem to solve, but if its solveable it could provide an amazing new marketplace.
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Fnoord 4y ago

Hmm, I've never used it, but something like Silkroad worked, it did not have trust issues. To me it reads like they try to save pennies on customer support.

Nextgrid 4y ago
The differences between Silk Road and Airbnb is that the former didn't have lots of investors and techbros to pay returns to, so they could actually offer a fair escrow service and still remain profitable, where as Airbnb has to commit fraud by pitching you an "insurance" service that never actually pays out because doing so would lower or even negate the techbros' returns.

jkepler 4y ago

> It's fundamentally a problem of trust. Absolutely. That's where bitcoin could help a new platform, as a decentralized trust protocol. The bisq.network protocol requires people to put up significant bonds to perform roles that are trusted, and then if they fail to perform well, they can loose some or all of their bond. The bisq token holders (bisq tokens are simply colored satoshis, i.e. they've built functional governance directly on bitcoin) vote monthly on various governance proposals, and can thus hold people doing bonded roles accountable. The tough question is whether such a system could make to individual apartment rentals in the real world. Its an oracle question: how to you establish the truth of competing claimed about the state if an apartment? Not an easy problem to solve, but if its solveable it could provide an amazing new marketplace.

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