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A decentralized anonymous marketplace

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Re: A decentralized anonymous marketplace

#31

Post by runeks »

pliny wrote: post #26
logicchains wrote: post #22

As a market anarchist, I think it's important to point out that the concept of 'reputation' plays a significant role in many justifications of how a market may function without regulation or any other form of state oversight. Making a market completely anonymous significantly limits the role reputation can play, which leads me to wonder whether some of the standard arguments for the effectiveness of markets don't app…

One of the goals in the OP: >* Allow users to maintain a pseudonymous identity that carries anonymous trust across transactions. i.e. anonymous as in it's difficult to establish a real world identity for sellers not anonymous as in no persistent identities at all. Bootstrapping such a marketplace is obviously difficult, since it's never safe to buy from someone without reputation but everybody starts without reputati…

> Bootstrapping such a marketplace is obviously difficult, since it's never safe to buy from someone without reputation but everybody starts without reputation - it might be possible to demand some proof-of-work-money to establish a marketplace identity, but I'm not sure where the money would go.

I think this is a sensible approach. The money (bitcoins) could simply be destroyed in a transaction associating an identity with the "burn". It would act as the equivalent of a fidelity bond, except the funds would not be recoverable. Perhaps it would make sense to only require this for new vendors, since the cost of a single "burn" for a vendor would be small compared to future revenue, but large for a potential customer, who might not know if they will ever use the service again.

Re: A decentralized anonymous marketplace

#32

Post by runeks »

ap22213 wrote: post #24
runeks wrote: post #14

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…

It doesn't help me to know that an anonymous person had tipped an anonymous vendor. That doesn't add much value. However, it would be sufficient if I could somehow determine that someone that I knew had tipped the vendor. Of course, I don't want my friends to see that I had tipped someone, or all of those of whom I have tipped. I just want it to be possible that they can see my tip, within an aggregate poll, only if…

> It's not important for me to know that an anonymous person tipped an anonymous vendor. That doesn't add much value.

Allow me to disagree (with the last sentence). If you can see that a certain vendor has spent a total of, say, 100 BTC on fees, to build up a reputation, then it doesn't make financial sense for that person to try to scam you in a 1 BTC transaction.

Re: A decentralized anonymous marketplace

#33

Post by runeks »

logicchains wrote: post #29
pliny wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the goals in the OP: >* Allow users to maintain a pseudonymous identity that carries anonymous trust across transactions. i.e. anonymous as in it's difficult to establish a real world identity for sellers not anonymous as in no persistent identities at all. Bootstrapping such a marketplace is obviously difficult, since it's never safe to buy from someone without reputation but everybody starts without reputati…

But if the identity is not connected to a real world identity, there is no legal recourse if that identity cheats you. Most who advocate a pure free market still accept the need for a legal system (not necessarily a State-based one), such that for instance people who take your money without delivering the good may be sued. An anonymous market means that there's no legal recourse if someone cheats you or steals from y…

> An anonymous market means that there's no legal recourse if someone cheats you or steals from you.

Which is why the protocol needs to financially discourage cheating.

Take the Bitcoin protocol, for example. It's not impossible to build a Bitcoin mining ASIC for $10M, get 30% of the network hashrate, and have a reasonable chance of reversing a 6-confirmation transaction. But unless you can find someone who is willing to accept a 6-confirmation $10M-equivalent Bitcoin transaction, it doesn't make financial sense for anyone to do so.

The same should apply for this hypothetical protocol. If you can see a merchant has spent 100 BTC to build up a reputation (eg. through proof-of-burn), he could try to scam you when you buy 0.5 BTC worth of goods from him, but he wouldn't profit from it financially.

Re: A decentralized anonymous marketplace

#34

Post by dan_bk »

> * Are there any similar attempts we can contribute to or borrow ideas from instead of implementing something on our own?

RetroShare could be used as a platform for this, given that it's:

- 100% Decentralized

- Public key encrypted

- Open source

...and accepts plug-ins for new features. See: http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/

Re: A decentralized anonymous marketplace

#35

Post by rk17 »

The advantages of the anonymous marketplace only really apply to people who's work is being suppressed (activists/journalists) or who's work is rightfully being persecuted (criminals). Maybe there's a case to be made that a lot of people do want to know who they're dealing with, besides that the system (algorithm etc.) thinks they're thrust worthy.

Re: A decentralized anonymous marketplace

#36

Post by ap22213 »

runeks wrote: post #32
ap22213 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't help me to know that an anonymous person had tipped an anonymous vendor. That doesn't add much value. However, it would be sufficient if I could somehow determine that someone that I knew had tipped the vendor. Of course, I don't want my friends to see that I had tipped someone, or all of those of whom I have tipped. I just want it to be possible that they can see my tip, within an aggregate poll, only if…

> It's not important for me to know that an anonymous person tipped an anonymous vendor. That doesn't add much value. Allow me to disagree (with the last sentence). If you can see that a certain vendor has spent a total of, say, 100 BTC on fees, to build up a reputation, then it doesn't make financial sense for that person to try to scam you in a 1 BTC transaction.

Maybe. But, doesn't it make sense for a vendor to spend 100 BTC in fees to build a reputation so that they may scam 1,000 people in 1 BTC transactions?

Re: A decentralized anonymous marketplace

#37

Post by logicchains »

runeks wrote: post #33
logicchains wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if the identity is not connected to a real world identity, there is no legal recourse if that identity cheats you. Most who advocate a pure free market still accept the need for a legal system (not necessarily a State-based one), such that for instance people who take your money without delivering the good may be sued. An anonymous market means that there's no legal recourse if someone cheats you or steals from y…

> An anonymous market means that there's no legal recourse if someone cheats you or steals from you. Which is why the protocol needs to financially discourage cheating. Take the Bitcoin protocol, for example. It's not impossible to build a Bitcoin mining ASIC for $10M, get 30% of the network hashrate, and have a reasonable chance of reversing a 6-confirmation transaction. But unless you can find someone who is willin…

Interesting. Would this prevent something like some of the Silk Road clones happening, wherein somebody spends months to years acquiring trust, and then makes off with the money for all incoming transactions, which is by then worth more than what they've spent on building the reputation?

Re: A decentralized anonymous marketplace

#38

Post by hendzen »

runeks wrote: post #33
logicchains wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if the identity is not connected to a real world identity, there is no legal recourse if that identity cheats you. Most who advocate a pure free market still accept the need for a legal system (not necessarily a State-based one), such that for instance people who take your money without delivering the good may be sued. An anonymous market means that there's no legal recourse if someone cheats you or steals from y…

> An anonymous market means that there's no legal recourse if someone cheats you or steals from you. Which is why the protocol needs to financially discourage cheating. Take the Bitcoin protocol, for example. It's not impossible to build a Bitcoin mining ASIC for $10M, get 30% of the network hashrate, and have a reasonable chance of reversing a 6-confirmation transaction. But unless you can find someone who is willin…

In practice it is better to build p2p systems under the stronger assumption that actors need not be economically rational. Otherwise the market could be attacked (say by a nation state that wants to kill it) by repeatedly building up rep, then scamming on a large transaction (even if the accumulated rep is worth more) to destroy faith in the market itself.

Re: A decentralized anonymous marketplace

#39

Post by mrfusion »

People are mentioning the need for reviews in such a marketplace. I present one possible solution:

> Users pay some fee to leave reviews. the more they pay the more the review is weighted.

> Buyers can rate the reviews on how helpful they are.

> A small transaction fee is collected from every transaction and distributed to reviewers proportionate to how many votes their each of their reviews has gotten.

I imagine this would prevent review spam, and reward people who post good reviews. In fact it could even support a class of professional reviewers making a living off of reviewing sellers and products.

Re: A decentralized anonymous marketplace

#40

Post by Ygg2 »

mrfusion wrote: post #39

People are mentioning the need for reviews in such a marketplace. I present one possible solution: > Users pay some fee to leave reviews. the more they pay the more the review is weighted. > Buyers can rate the reviews on how helpful they are. > A small transaction fee is collected from every transaction and distributed to reviewers proportionate to how many votes their each of their reviews has gotten. I imagine thi…

What stops company making it, to just pay $10000 to heavily bias their own review?
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