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>If this already exists, do tell.

Yes, it does exist, and it's completely open source. It's called OpenBazaar, and it's a fully decentralized marketplace. There's no middlemen at all.

https://www.openbazaar.org/

It's backed by the OB1 company, which has raised $4.25 million from a16z, USV, and BlueYard.

It uses IPFS so that stores don't go offline, and all payments are settled in Bitcoin.

We love code reviews and pull requests. The back end is done in Go:

https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-go

The front end is an Electron app:

https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-desktop

How do they manage listing flooding or fraud?

Buyers can place orders one of two ways:

1. A direct order. The Bitcoin goes directly from buyer to vendor. There are no protections. This method is only used for small value transactions or transactions where the buyer trusts the vendor.

2. A moderated order. The Bitcoin goes into an escrow account (a 2-of-3 Bitcoin multisig address) and there is a third party moderator who will resolve a dispute if one of the parties feels wronged.

Note that if there is no dispute opened in a moderated order, the buyer and the seller can release the funds without the moderator even knowing they were chosen for an order.

There's nothing to prevent listing flooding, but the rest of the network will just ignore nodes that are abusive. There are also third party search engines that crawl the network, and they'll block spam themselves for their users. Rawflood is an example:

https://rawflood.com

How do you select and assign moderators?

Currently the vendor selects a list of moderators they are comfortable working with, and then at the time of a sale the buyer selects the one they prefer. If a dispute is opened the moderator the buyer picked from the vendor's list will resolve the dispute.

That does not sound safe for the buyer at all; they’re forced to choose a moderator from a list completely decided by the vendor?

In practice most vendors choose from the top moderators on the platform who all have good reputations, so it's not as dangerous as it sounds.

If a vendor only offers unknown moderators a buyer just won't buy from them, or will ask them to add a moderator they trust.

What's in it for the moderator? I assume they get a cut of the escrow?

How is the moderator's reputation visible to a buyer? If there's some kind of rating system, why would the reviews be useful at all? After all, any situation where the moderator has to act will leave one party pissed off.

This seems like a lot of complication just to buy something on the internet... unless what you're buying is heroin. In which case the whole 100% p2p thing starts making more sense.

But how do moderators become moderators in the first place? How do I, as a prospective buyer, know that all the moderators aren’t all pre-chosen by big sellers (by fair means or foul) to be sympathetic to them?

Regarding “reputations”: Remember Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

Being a desktop application is a pretty serious barrier to usability for the average person. So is using Bitcoin, to be honest.

You're right. We're about to launch a mobile app and working on getting it working on browser as well.

Bitcoin is a barrier but our goal is to eventually be currency agnostic. It does enable us to do escrow properly though with 2-of-3 multisig, and it also ensures that people control their own money.

Bitcoin is an accessibility barrier, but OpenBazaar is also an example of the kind of models bitcoin reduces the hurdles for.

it is certainly a barrier, but if sellers recognize that sales over bitcoin has lower costs (cost of fraud) - certain items should show up on these marketplaces and people knowing about that tech will be really happy to get bargains... or so it should work :)

None of the problems with Ebay are the software.

OpenBazaar looks like a great project, but with $4.25 million in backing from VCs, it does not look like a charity project. How do you plan on monetizing your work? It was not clear to me from the OpenBazaar or OB1 websites. I only ask because many great products work well when VC money is supporting it, but then are seriously degraded when the company needs to start showing revenue and then a profit.

I responded to this elsewhere:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15561370

In an ideal world, maybe from selling consulting to commercial sellers? In reality, I see absolutely no overlap between the kind of business who would ever consider paying for FOSS consulting and the kind of business who would trade on a more chaotic version of eBay.

But could an IPFS distributed system provide reasonable search, e.g. competing with eBay's new search-by-image?An open, distributed market can be worked by closed, centralized search engines. If they design the market they are a prime candidate for becoming the dominant search engine layered on top.

I never understood how this works. How does a16z, USV, and BlueYard make their money back? That's why I've been hesitant to deal with this stuff because I don't understand the business model.

They didn't invest in OpenBazaar, they invested in OB1, the company who is leading development on OpenBazaar. I'm a co-founder of OB1 and we monetize by offering services to users on the platform, not by monetizing the platform directly (no fees).

If you don't mind me asking:

How do things like privacy policies, terms of service, contracts between parties work?

The contracts between users are all cryptographically signed in a system called Ricardian Contracts. At any point each party has a digitally signed copy of all the information they need to proceed with the trade.

Because this is a protocol for decentralized trade, and a network to engage in trade, there's really no terms of service or privacy policies that can be enforced between users. They connect to each other completely P2P, the devs or anyone else can't enforce anything between them (and don't even know a transaction is happening).

Is this a sorta "we had no idea so much of our revenue was derived from pirated content" play sorta like Youtube, then, but for an active marketplace that's actually maybe just filled with fraud?

No awareness by the company and no easy ability to enforce terms before users make me wonder why the heck I'd ever want to try to sell or buy something on that platform. Seems like craigslist but with too high a bar of entry for the good-intentioned non-fraudster non-tech-savvy users.

Craigslist was great before it got popular. Not sure if having transactions in bitcoin will filter out the right people, but one can hope so.

So you can sell your goods to all three people on Earth interested in both ipfs and btc?

They are built on top of those technologies, but the user isn't exposed to any of the technical complexities. Seriously, go to openbazaar.org and download it, see for yourself.

> go to openbazaar.org and download it

No, I'm not going to install software just for accessing a marketplace. That's just silly, because now I have to worry about compatibility with my OS and a wealth of other problems that comes with running applications natively (e.g. is it compromised by a 0-day, since I doubt it gets as much attention as one of the big browsers)

OP has relatively specific bad experiences with ebay. How does OB exactly prevent similar cases? Being decentralized and based on bitcoin does not help against fraudulent buyers or buyers wasting time by attempting to negotiate unreasonable terms.

This is a real hard problem. Bad people make everything bad for everyone else. The problem is more about the US market laws and scalability I think.

Large companies like eBay have to take fraud and customer support costs and weight it against their company vs you as a seller. It would take a company that cared more about sellers than their own bottom line.

The customer is always right. Middle men like eBay have two customers though: the buyer and the seller. They support the one that helps them the most and let the other get burned occasionally.

Note: I mostly buy "buy-it-now" items on ebay

The thing I miss most about ebay are the independent sellers of "crap" - not sure how else to put it, but basically the random people who dig out stuff from the their "attic" and put it up for people to bid over.

You know - what Ebay was originally set up for.

I mean - one time I found a bucket of bolts for auction; just a bunch of random rusty bolts someone had in the back of their shed, they decided to auction off. And wouldn't you know it, a bidding war happened. That bucket of bolts went for close to a $100.00 by the time it was all over.

Those are the kind of stuff I like to see, and the kind of stuff I like to bid on and/or buy. Not the mass-produced junk from China - if I want that, I'll get it from Amazon or Ali Express (and I do).

You can still find this on Ebay, but it isn't as ubiquitous like it was in the beginning. I personally think their decision to compete with Amazon instead of sticking to their core users really changed perceptions and user base. Maybe it's better for them, but for users who like auctions, finding something similar that is trusted as much hasn't been easy (there are a few).

What platforms do you suggest as alternatives for finding your aforementioned independent sellers of valuable items? I think OfferUp and LetGo seem viable.

I agree completely, also their platform is just so slow and full of bugs. It simply looks like they havn't changed anything in the past 10 years.

Edit: Forgot to mention that their search is so bad, they mix search results with search phrases previously so it's impossible to find things I am looking for.

Years ago I sold an ipod on ebay after Christmas. My parents bought me one and a family relative also bought me one.

My account was suspended for fraud even though I provided proof of purchase for the item. I left ebay/paypal and stopped using it when I realized that they could arbitrarily hold my money for 6 months even though I provided legit proof they were wrong.

"In my opinion, eBay for sellers (outside of maybe the power sellers. I've sold <100 items) is a nightmare."

I wouldn't argue too strongly with you there. I've sold loads of stuff on eBay (about £50k worth over the years, apparently!), and there are problems too often. People try it on, so I have to send -everything- via recorded mail, which is expensive, so then people complain about the postage cost, even though I always put them up front.

I've had quite a few completely fatuous claims made against me when selling, one of which said there were parts missing, when I'd actually said those parts were missing in the listing. eBay refunded him and let him keep the item.

Whenever I have an issue now, I just say 'send it back, I'll refund it' as this is invariably the path of lowest friction. Dealing with muppets is a cost of selling on eBay that has to be factored into the equation, alas, and it's worse than it ever has been; here in the UK around 2000 it was pretty 'niche' and only serious people seemed to be on there. But after a few years (and a few newspaper articles along the lines of 'quit your job and make a living on eBay') it started getting like it is now.

Non paying bidders are a pain to sellers, but it means nothing to eBay so they don't do anything about it.

The upside, at least, is that when you buy on there, you're well covered. Had a dodgy 'reconditioned' cylinder head turn up a few weeks ago. Returned it without even having to pay postage, which was a relief - in the past that would have been £400 I'd never have seen again.

I had a summer of eBay nightmares in college. I was supposed to help a relative sell an attic full of old clothes and knick knacks. Nothing was buying because I was a new seller, so I put some old video games on to bolster my score with quick sales. Everything went well until one person reported me for not including the box & manual (which was never mentioned in the listing) while another claimed the disc was counterfeit. After these two headaches, my relative complained about having to give some costume jewelry up for $7. At that point I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Final profit was $97

There are definitely ways to improve the process. Maybe a "middleman" has to provide an appraisal or validation for the jewelry/electronic before making the listing. The true obstacle with any new competitor is network effect. When normal people want to sell local, they use Craigslist, when they want to sell nationally, they use eBay. Any chaff has already been taken by the big guys, and what is left isn't worth the fight.

Google did a similar acquisition in 2010, "like.com". https://techcrunch.com/2010/08/20/its-official-google-acquir... .

Might be related to Google goggles app which died

Lollipuff (YC W'13: https://www.lollipuff.com/) does exactly this for higher-end women's fashion -- to directly address the issues you had with your Tiffany necklace (though I don't think they support Tiffany today). All the items get authenticated before listing by professional authenticators, without needing to take items in hand. This provides more-than-ample evidence in the event of a dispute (the authenticators are well known in the field!). Then Lollipuff walks buyers & sellers through the process to ensure a safe transaction -- including instructions on shipping, which can also be a frequent gotcha for high-end items.

I wonder how much eBay has been impacted by this type of "wedging". I would use eBay primarily to buy/sell musical instruments but Reverb took a pretty big chunk of that market and provides a better and more trustworthy experience than eBay, at least in my experiences there.

I know there are a few fashion-related sites like this out there and I'd guess there are other "Reverb for X" sites as well.

I'm sure there is still a fortune in the long-tail but specialty sites seem to be more of a concern than a direct competitor.

Ebay doesn't charge a listing fee for the first 50 items per month. If the buyer never pays you should open an unpaid item claim after three days, then call ebay after four days and have the claim closed in your favor. If more sellers did this the buyers would get filtered out of ebay. In the future you can use buy it now and require immediate payment to prevent this entirely. Verifying the authenticity of commonly faked items does not have an easy solution and I would not buy or sell anything like that on Ebay. Any place that allows the sale of items like this will have tradeoffs.

Some alternatives to Ebay are Ebid, Etsy, Rakuten/buy.com, Amazon, Bonanza(allows cross listing with Ebay), Swappa for phones, uBid, Jet.

There are a bajillion eBay alternatives in the wild. Here are a few... /s

mercari.com, swappa.com, letgo.com, offerup.com, snapsale.com, wish.com local, varagesale.com, listia.com, carousell.com, shpock.com, 5miles.com

Believe it or not, eBay has even made their own local selling app close5.com

As long as there a dishonest people, you're either going to be a nightmare for sellers, a nightmare for buyers, a random nightmare, or you're going to have a lot of overhead to have competent people in a scalable organization arbitrate everything.

Sellers and buyers can now use eBay Authenticate to get independent confirmation that goods are as authentic. It’s starting out just focused on certain types of handbags and luxury items but expected to expand over time. https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2017/10/16/ebay-...

TradeMe[1] is pretty good. It stopped eBay getting a foothold in New Zealand.

[1] https://www.trademe.co.nz

Seems like Facebook would be best positioned to do this. They already more transparency than Ebay/Amazon with regards to who you're dealing with. They also have regional buy/sell groups already. Integrate with some shipping platforms and they'd be on their way.

That being said, its not really in their lane.

I've actually thought about that idea and even did some initial prototyping for a mobile app. But the idea I had was a more usable/less scammy version of craigslist specifically for local commerce. Initially, I was thinking of limiting the goods to electronics and then expanding slowly to other items.

I have the same problem with Amazon. Both of them favor the buyer because customers trusting their platform is a huge selling point for them. As a seller most people are honest, but enough of them are not for it to be extremely annoying.

Problem is you have plenty of scammer sellers too.

Amazon is the worst for a seller, much worse than eBay. It's completely in favor of the buyer over there, and can easily be gamed. Saying something is damaged, waiting to the absolute last second of a 30 day "trial" to return it. It's horrible. I will never sell anything on there again.

It's just as bad selling on Amazon. They both disproportionately and intentionally side with buyers because the buyers are where the money comes from.

I just sell things on reddit. Something about having access to the other’s post history keeps things honest.

What are some marketplace subreddits?

Hardwareswap is a catch-all, and also smaller ones like appleswap and steamgameswap

Ebay is great.

There isn't any marketplace without fraud on iPhone and jewelry.

I think blockchain will help us with this.

It would be interesting to create an HN bot that replies exactly this to every top submission, then track the up/downvotes

For the payments layer, yes, but not for storing the actual marketplace data. Blockchains aren't great for storing data apart from maintaining a transaction ledger.

When we started building OpenBazaar we specifically avoided using a blockchain apart from Bitcoin for payments. It was the right call I think. There are plenty of other decentralization tools to use apart from blockchains, like IPFS, which OpenBazaar 2.0 is built on top of.

The only purchase I ever done on eBay was in 2002 for a PocketPC. It never came. I reported the seller. They said 22 others were scammed and PayPal, their partner in crime, said that they couldn't reveal the seller's personal detail unless by court order. That was the only UX data point I needed. Never used eBay again.

What were you planning to do with the seller's personal information outside of the legal system?

Naively, alert his bank that he was stealing money from everyone and share the PayPal email with them. I wasn't aware at the time that I could take the matter to small claims court. PayPal offered no assistance as far as laying out what my options were. They were fine with it, it seemed. Zero on actual customer "care."