Well, it's probably require a fork. Cryptocurrency is already tightly integrated with OpenBazaar. This also removes all of the platform's credibility in my eyes.
OpenBazaar is over four years old now. It didn't emerge out of blockchain hype.
Cryptocurrency means it can be completely peer to peer and not reliant on any payment processing platforms, and with multisig is allows for powerful escrow as well.
Hype has certainly peaked recently but that doens't mean they weren't a part of it. Blockchain has been hype for a long time.
I understand the "benefits" of cryptocurrency. They're all outweighed by people wanting their money to have a stable value so they can realistically budget their real life expenses. In the bubble cryptocurrency nuts live in where they don't have to worry about real world problems like carefully budgeting their paychecks, it might work, but software like OpenBazaar crashes right into reality.
Do you think there’s any chance that within 5 years there will be a somewhat widely accessible cryptotoken whose value is decently stable in the short and medium term, so that platforms like OpenBazaar would become at least viable for early adopter types and their friends?
Because cryptocurrency is clearly the wrong solution to this problem. If they actually wanted to make a decentralized marketplace non-technical people can use they would not have used cryptocurrency.
its not difficult to understand that if you make this system with existing currencies it is centralised by default since the payment processors can and will enforce restrictions. then why make it decentralised?
We would absolutely welcome attempts to integrate other forms of payment into OpenBazaar. Our escrow system currently relies on multisig but that's the only significant impediment to adoption.