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Strange that we seem to have to keep trying to get back to where we started.
That said, some major challenges (I've done a bit of thinking about this) - First: Sybil attacks on the reputation system. The author alluded to this but the solution given was vaguely specified and somewhat reminiscent of social network driven overlays like Tonika that a) are inherently problematic for anonymity, and b) hard to grow due to aforementioned invite problem. Another problem is maintaining anonymity while making things efficient - the obvious design would be DHT based but this leads to a whole host of weaknesses (see a paper called 'Hashing it Out In Public' for details), and leads to fragility as DHTs are weakened by high rates of churn, which are quite common in real world p2p networks. Have quite a bit more to say on this topic but I'm on mobile at the moment, may write up an essay at some point.
I would encourage the OP to read up on some of Peter Todd's ideas around fidelity bonds for some ideas on the reputation aspect, also have a look at a (centralized) marketplace called NashX for dispute resolution.
EDIT: also check out the bitcoin-otc web of trust.
This is the reason spam emails are so frequent: you can make money from something that costs very little. If reviews were near-free, good reviews would be as plentiful as spam emails.
Free reviews means vendors can make sock-puppet accounts, fake a transaction, and leave a five-star review to themselves. With Silk Road, they take x% of the value of each transaction (or if not, that's at least how it should be), so if a vendor seeks to inflate their review score, they will pay a price for it.
In fact, a good overall review score for a vendor - as far as I can tell - is the sum of all the review "values" (1 to five stars) multiplied by the value of the transaction in question. So a vendor with 10 five-star reviews on 10 orders of a value of 1 BTC each, would have the same score as a vendor with a single five-star review on a single transaction with a value of 10 BTC. Both these vendors would have paid the same amount of money to get this, equal, review score.
I've thought a bit about this, and I don't see how this can be solved in a decentralized market, with no middleman to tax transactions, and make sure that vendors can't get free reviews.
As far as I can see, the essential problem with decentralized anonymous marketplaces is that reviews need to cost money. Plain and simple. Good reviews have great value, so they need to have a non-zero price. A vendor's review history is the indicator by which you assess whether a vendor is trustworthy or not, and a vendor should have to pay to achieve a trustworthy reputation - if good reviews are free, and you can…
As far as I can see, the essential problem with decentralized anonymous marketplaces is that reviews need to cost money. Plain and simple. Good reviews have great value, so they need to have a non-zero price. A vendor's review history is the indicator by which you assess whether a vendor is trustworthy or not, and a vendor should have to pay to achieve a trustworthy reputation - if good reviews are free, and you can…
You can use proof-of-sacrifice to give reviews a cost. Look up OP_RETURN in relation to bitcoin.
All we would need to do would be to "burn" a certain percentage of the transaction, eg. by sending it to an provably unspendable address (a hash160 of all zeros, for example).
So the transaction from the customer to the vendor, paying for the goods, would be a 2-of-3 multi-signature transaction (of which the customer, the vendor and the escrow agent each hold a copy), with an output (let's call it output1) to the vendor (paying them for the product), and an OP_RETURN output which specifies a review value (for example, 1 to 5). output1 will then have to be redeemed in a new transaction (created by the vendor), and this transaction will include an output that burns x% of the amount redeemed from output1, and an OP_RETURN output that specifies the vendor's public key.
To calculate the aforementioned total review score for a vendor, all you do is check every transaction that contains the vendor's public key in the OP_RETURN output, and take the sum of the review value multiplied by the amount of bitcoins burned for each of these transactions.
As far as I can see, the essential problem with decentralized anonymous marketplaces is that reviews need to cost money. Plain and simple. Good reviews have great value, so they need to have a non-zero price. A vendor's review history is the indicator by which you assess whether a vendor is trustworthy or not, and a vendor should have to pay to achieve a trustworthy reputation - if good reviews are free, and you can…
This was what the internet was supposed to be all along, correct? A place where data can move freely from point to point without oversight or control from a central authority. Strange that we seem to have to keep trying to get back to where we started.
As far as I can see, the essential problem with decentralized anonymous marketplaces is that reviews need to cost money. Plain and simple. Good reviews have great value, so they need to have a non-zero price. A vendor's review history is the indicator by which you assess whether a vendor is trustworthy or not, and a vendor should have to pay to achieve a trustworthy reputation - if good reviews are free, and you can…
My 2 cents: The element of trust is primary for any financial transaction. There's a reason why eBay Amazon et al employ thousands for conflict resolution b/w buyers and sellers. I wouldn't mind going on SilkRoad for acquiring something which I otherwise cannot but for items which are available elsewhere, I don't mind giving up tiny bit of control while transacting on a commercial platform like eBay.
In contrast, there are touch-and-go relationships all the time, like at convenience stores. You can't have the exchange without being present for the entire transaction, because neither party trusts the other.