[SamPatt]

>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

[Sir_Cmpwn]

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

[SamPatt]

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.

[mustacheemperor]

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

[hippich]

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 :)

[zokier]

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.

[jes5199]

None of the problems with Ebay are the software.

[tomaskafka]

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

[SamPatt]

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.

[craftyguy]

> 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)

[sharemywin]

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.

[SamPatt]

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).

[sharemywin]

If you don't mind me asking:

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

[SamPatt]

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).

[majormajor]

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.

[njarboe]

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.

[njarboe]

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.

[usrusr]

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.

[SamPatt]

I responded to this elsewhere:

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

[themihai]

How do they manage listing flooding or fraud?

[SamPatt]

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

[teddyh]

How do you select and assign moderators?

[SamPatt]

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.

[teddyh]

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?

[SamPatt]

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.