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How is a service like Shopify, where any non-technical person can open a store and sell things not an open marketplace? You don't buy through Shopify anymore t

How is a service like Shopify, where any non-technical person can open a store and sell things not an open marketplace? You don't buy through Shopify anymore than you're buying through WordPress if the seller chooses WordPress for their company website. The web is the open marketplace. Shopify isn't Amazon. Also, I don't hate the idea of what you're building but keep in mind lots of people selling stuff on services like Shopify have zero technical skills and most people who shop online are also normies who will know nothing about open models and whatnot.

theturtletalks 2mo ago
The web is an open marketplace but people still flock to Amazon to search across many sellers and find the best value and quality. With AI, the web is the marketplace in the sense that an AI agent can scour the web. But most people will use ChatGPT to do so. Instead of ChatGPT searching across all websites, they have a partnership with Shopify to automatically show their products via the agentic commerce protocol you shared. Even if other platforms implement that protocol, there is no guarantee OpenAI will approve it. Which is fine, they can run the product how they see fit. But as a buyer, why would you want OpenAI to play middleman when you can have the LLM itself vet the stores? That’s why I’m building with our open, decentralized marketplace. It’ll connect to any store online, turn their checkout process into a MCP-UI, and we will have a list of vetted stores that we’ve made sure are legit, but you can add your own. And your part about Shopify is right. We’re trying to have a premium experience with our open-source alternative as well. Our goal to not to get every Shopify user to switch, but to give an alternative to stores that want to own the tech stack that runs their business.
- tomveber 2mo ago
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theturtletalks 2mo ago

The web is an open marketplace but people still flock to Amazon to search across many sellers and find the best value and quality. With AI, the web is the marketplace in the sense that an AI agent can scour the web. But most people will use ChatGPT to do so. Instead of ChatGPT searching across all websites, they have a partnership with Shopify to automatically show their products via the agentic commerce protocol you shared. Even if other platforms implement that protocol, there is no guarantee OpenAI will approve it. Which is fine, they can run the product how they see fit. But as a buyer, why would you want OpenAI to play middleman when you can have the LLM itself vet the stores? That’s why I’m building with our open, decentralized marketplace. It’ll connect to any store online, turn their checkout process into a MCP-UI, and we will have a list of vetted stores that we’ve made sure are legit, but you can add your own. And your part about Shopify is right. We’re trying to have a premium experience with our open-source alternative as well. Our goal to not to get every Shopify user to switch, but to give an alternative to stores that want to own the tech stack that runs their business.

tomveber 2mo ago
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