Sneak Peek at Bitcoin's Upcoming Killer App – Open Bazaar
bravenewcoin.com
bravenewcoin.com
https://blog.openbazaar.org/what-is-openbazaar/
We're getting close to launch and we'd love as many eyes on the code as possible.
Here's our backend, built in Python:
https://github.com/OpenBazaar/OpenBazaar-Server
And our client:
https://github.com/OpenBazaar/OpenBazaar-Client
If you want to try it yourself I recommend you join our Slack and ask for help. We're building installers and packages now but I'm sure most people here could handle the manual installation process if they're curious. You can invite yourself to the Slack here:
https://openbazaar-slackin-drwasho.herokuapp.com/
Cheers!
Buyers will have to spend more time researching vendors and moderators, then agreeing with a vendor on a moderator which will be difficult as no moderator can be 100% impartial and the largest 5-6 (that will develop due to natural economies of scale) will develop their own brands and reputations for being easy on buyers, easy on sellers, random coin toss, etc. Where is this cost made up for the buyers - will they see lower prices? Wouldn't it be more expensive as moderators need to be compensated for their services?
Also, from the pitch deck linked in the article [1] slides 48-51:
What about moderator reputation? Difficult problem to solve as there will always be on party that is happy with the result, and one that is unhappy. Transparency is the best approach...Negative or positive consensus on the quality of dispute resolution will inform Vendors and Buyers
How can there be a consensus on a moderator if one party is always happy and one is always unhappy? Won't the consensus always be 50/50?
Also, how do you plan to scale up transparency? Is that mostly a UX/UI challenge, or is there some clever mechanism to solve this through cryptographic/social hacking?
Last question: How will the leadership/dev of OpenBazaar be structured in the future? Will you guys develop something similar to the Linux Foundation under a non-profit charter? Will the foundation enact a transaction fee to fund itself?
Sorry for the barrage - just extremely interested as someone who has studied Bitcoin/blockchain tech in the past.
[1] http://www.slideshare.net/drwasho/openbazaar-ratings-reviews...
Yes. I try to explain this a bit more here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3zv6sc/sneak_peek_...
> Where is this cost made up for the buyers - will they see lower prices? Wouldn't it be more expensive as moderators need to be compensated for their services?
Yes, we expect lower prices would be the main draw for buyers. The price shouldn't be made up with moderation since moderators are only paid for services rendered - if there's no dispute then they aren't even aware of the transaction happening.
>How can there be a consensus on a moderator if one party is always happy and one is always unhappy? Won't the consensus always be 50/50?
What Dr. Sanchez is trying to get at is the fact that text reviews from other parties (and explanations from the mod) will be publicly viewable. That would allow a prospect to review them and see which side they think is more legitimate.
We recognize that decentralized reputation systems are basically the holy grail of p2p systems and we don't even pretend to be solving the problem, only giving users some information to make a more informed decision. I expect that many moderators will choose to publicly identify themselves and use their IRL reputation as well.
>Last question: How will the leadership/dev of OpenBazaar be structured in the future? Will you guys develop something similar to the Linux Foundation under a non-profit charter? Will the foundation enact a transaction fee to fund itself?
No transaction fees. It's open source, so even if we wanted to do this it would likely fail because people could always fork it and remove the fee.
Right now many of the core devs are a part of a company called OB1 (I'm a co-founder). We received $1 million from Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz in order to lead development of the platform, push for network adoption, and then offer services to users on the network.
One last question - how big is the potential market? That is, what is your estimate of the amount that Amazon spends on buyer/fraud protection services as a percent of their yearly revenue? Is that increasing or decreasing?
To me it seems like the key will be maintaining neutrality for as long as possible. Which should be reasonable as long as you continue to secure altruistic funding (ala Horowitz) from entities that are not looking for an exit on the short-medium timeframe.
I've never heard of VCs being described as altruistic, and it is very far from my experience. Is this something people believe?
Also, asking, "how big is the potential market?" seems inappropriate, but ymmmv.
I've got my own estimates of the size of the market, was hoping to compare, but you're right - that's pretty sensitive info that the company probably paid for in order to pitch investors.
Check out this proposed solution here. Fully decentralized; it's basically personalized page-rank, for people instead of websites.
I suggest using a web of trust akin to PGP signing mechanisms
"Interesting. This isn't just a decentralized marketplace, there seems to be something bigger going on. If you look closely at the screenshots, you will see there seems to be a social integration within it too. Notice there is the ability to follow stores. I'd imagine that would mean there will be a feed to consume all the new items and content from the stores you're following too. This isn't going to be the application you pop in to buy something once a month with Bitcoin, it's going to be a social platform with commerce layered in that you visit every day.
This seems like what every artist, social media star, author, photographer, musician, etc needs. Build a strong following, post an update of a new song, content or anything and people can pay to play/read it right away. New types of pay to read blogs will likely start to emerge in the market. New social media stars will emerge by creating edgy stores where people can pay them to do/draw/write/sing/play/cook/photograph/wear/eat certain things. A new social channel will come to life and the content and stores will be like something we've never seen on the internet before. It's going to be very very interesting people.
This is huge!"
As for buying photographs it may be ok, but I would not pay for news articles (such as LWN, for example) with non-anonymous account.
Some other cryptocoins (Monero, et al) use ring signatures to truly disguise the path that the money takes through the system.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10850192 [2] https://cryptome.org/jya/digicrash.htm [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecash
Could they just float themselves on some sort of bitcoin stock market so as a retail investor, I can throw some BTC their way and get a small % of their company?
It's so frustrating seeing ideas I know will become big and not being able to put my money there. I understand the startup world pretty well but as I'm not a VC I have no way of getting skin in the game. Instead putting my money into blue-chips and YOLOing on IPOs from companies that are already huge.
Of course we have great faith in it, and expect it will be a great match for Bitcoin (decentralized markets for decentralized money) but we're not claiming this is the project to end all other Bitcoin projects.
It's great to see so many people excited about it though.
I don't think escrow is a better preposition even if it is nominally cheaper (there is of course more risk involved, it takes longer and is more complicated, but it is also more private; not sure if it would be overall cheaper when considering all the above).
I'd be glad if someone finally managed to take on Ebay but I don't have high hopes. At most people have managed to fill in some niche where Ebay is doing a poor job, usually because it requires some specific knowledge of the merchandise being sold. Open Bazaar will probably follow suit and of course it will be that kind of merchandise.
I don't like the Moderator rating system though, seems too easy to game and has too many worthless stages 1-5. Bitcoin-OTC ratings are more clear. The rating "This is a scam avoid at all costs" opens the door for legal issues of people trying to sue the developers like when Ebay gave up on negative feedback due to too many lawsuits. Of course there is also issues of governments trying to shut down this completely due to weapons and narcotics undoubtedly being sold on OB in the future, I assume the creators have a plan for dealing with that inevitable gov harassment.
The creators/maintainers should also be careful where they travel, if they fly to say, China, Indonesia or Turkey for any reasons they could be arrested there and pushed through a kangaroo court.
I imagine this will happen with OB the official app will be crippled by lawsuits but of course this all depends what they have told each other in private unencrypted emails and the dev mailing list. There's already a thread where Patterson advocates to recommend suggesting that developers talking about OpenBazaar with the public cite example products that are “illicit but socially acceptable" such as Fireworks and Radar Detectors. “Stuff that people wouldn’t disagree with but is technically illegal to sell because of stupid laws.” Seems nobody has learned from the Megaupload case how you can talk yourself into problems with overzealous prosecutors.
They should really be selling Big Buck Bunny DVDs in all their examples, they're going to get fucked sideways if they suggest anything remotely questionable in any official context.
edit: The site's having trouble, but here's a link to the subreddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBazaar
There is a much more interesting solution for this problem. No third party needed. Two parties, game theory and one established fact about human psychology could be enough.
Idea is following - if any of parties can't possibly gain anything from fraud in the long run, there will be no fraud. To achieve that, buyer freezes two prices of the item, seller freezes one price of the item. Money is frozen atomically, and is defrosted atomically. Money is freed only if both parties are happy. Some studies indicate that people have very strong feelings about justice IF they are dealing with strangers. This should cause strong revulsion of any unjust solution (e.g. buyer caving in just to unfreeze some of frozen money). To prevent such blackmail and other forms of psychological manipulation, both parties are anonymous by default and can't communicate using this software.
Project is called Bitmarkets [1], it's published on MIT license and it's amazing. Read about it.
This is similar to any real world transaction. I can buy directly from someone if I trust them, but if not we both need to agree to use the same third party to facilitate the transaction.
Secondly, despite a small minority who are amoral, the vast majority of people aren't short-term thinking opportunistic scammers. The rewards of being legit can be massive and rewarding on a long-term basis. Inspiring others to follow suit. Scamming is always a short-term, high-risk low-reward act that always exists as a niche in every market. The odds will always be against these people because the opposition is better financed and incentivized to counter their schemes.
Thirdly, Most consumers have a certain level of tolerance for being scammed but as long as the majority of transactions are legit then the trade-offs of reduced fees, lack of censorship, and pseudonymity will keep people using the market.
Finally, if someone doesn't have the tolerance or analytical ability to not get scammed then there still exists many options outside of the market. What matters is a significant enough amount of buyers/sellers use the service. It doesn't need everyone.
The stores are trivially censored, and there's no efficiency here that will stand up to the preferences of non-libertarian consumers that have no problem with the so-called 'middle man' that is our current state of frictionless purchasing.
You've obviously never bought anything with Bitcoin if you think credit cards are lower-friction (given that one already has both in his possession).
Chat rooms are skype-like now?
I suppose if you're talking about closed source.. :)
this sh!t is old...