SpeakEasy comes to mind. It was very much in its infancy last time I checked, but the ideas behind it seemed profound. I don’t have access to .onion sites right now, and I don’t have the url either, but maybe someone remembers and can post the link (assuming it's still up).
A decentralized anonymous marketplace
61–70 of 70 posts
Re: A decentralized anonymous marketplace
#62My 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.
I agree with this. I'm thinking about building a decentralized marketplace but without anonymity for this very reason.
Re: A decentralized anonymous marketplace
#63I've written a description for the potential implementation of a decentralized pseudonymous marketplace. I would appreciate any critical analysis of it. https://github.com/lapp0/Smart-Market
In my humble opinion, after the advent of bitcoin, there is no longer a reason for a client to do proof-of-work. Bitcoin basically outsources proof-of-work to miners, and presents you with a token that represents proof-of-work. As money, bitcoin proves - just as proof-of-work - that you've worked for it, there is no such thing as free money. The price of a unit of proof-of-work varies wildly, depending on what hardware you have. The price of money is the same for everyone, or at least varies much less.
The problem with proof-of-work is that attackers can invest in powerful hardware - as your spec notes - and have an advantage over other nodes. When paying in bitcoin, as a spam prevention mechanism, no one has an advantage over others. Everyone pays the current market price for bitcoins, and even the miners - who generate bitcoins, and so don't pay the market price - can sell their coins at the market price, so it still comes down to "do I want to use these bitcoins to spam this network, or do I want to sell the coins for $575 per piece?".
Re: A decentralized anonymous marketplace
#64I've written a description for the potential implementation of a decentralized pseudonymous marketplace. I would appreciate any critical analysis of it. https://github.com/lapp0/Smart-Market
In my humble opinion, after the advent of bitcoin, there is no longer a reason for a client to do proof-of-work. Bitcoin basically outsources proof-of-work to miners, and presents you with a token that represents proof-of-work. As money, bitcoin proves - just as proof-of-work - that you've worked for it, there is no such thing as free money. The price of a unit of proof-of-work varies wildly, depending on what hardwa…
I agree and don't plan on using PoW other than in the proof of concept. V0.2 should use PoS because proof of burn (as a believe you are suggesting) is bad for the Bitcoin network (large number of unnecessary tx) and expensive (you don't want to pay the tx fee every time you view a listing). PoS doesn't require any tx in the Bitcoin network (ignoring those you used to earn the stake).
Thanks for the comment. Let me know if you have any other concerns.
Re: A decentralized anonymous marketplace
#65There is a project called BitMarket that runs a market on the bitmessage platform, really neat. https://github.com/AyrA/BitMarket https://bitmessage.org/forum/index.php?topic=3549.0
Just a note: This is not decentralized, it is just a centralized marketplace using the decentralized network Bitmessage.
Re: A decentralized anonymous marketplace
#66Hi. I've been working on a system very similar to OPs description for months now -- http://portobello-road.org . Must be an idea who's time has come, eh? Now I know how Newton and Liebniz felt when they discovered they'd simultaneously invented calculus. Aside from a few architectural decisions (hubs and marketplaces instead of DHT for seller data dissemination and indexing) things are much the same. Would love to jo…
very cool! I love the name. It sounds like a b-side by Ween or something. Portobello Road.
Re: A decentralized anonymous marketplace
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my humble opinion, after the advent of bitcoin, there is no longer a reason for a client to do proof-of-work. Bitcoin basically outsources proof-of-work to miners, and presents you with a token that represents proof-of-work. As money, bitcoin proves - just as proof-of-work - that you've worked for it, there is no such thing as free money. The price of a unit of proof-of-work varies wildly, depending on what hardwa…
I agree and don't plan on using PoW other than in the proof of concept. V0.2 should use PoS because proof of burn (as a believe you are suggesting) is bad for the Bitcoin network (large number of unnecessary tx) and expensive (you don't want to pay the tx fee every time you view a listing). PoS doesn't require any tx in the Bitcoin network (ignoring those you used to earn the stake). Thanks for the comment. Let me kn…
> V0.2 should use PoS because proof of burn (as a believe you are suggesting) is bad for the Bitcoin network (large number of unnecessary tx) and expensive (you don't want to pay the tx fee every time you view a listing).
My suggestion was related to ratings, not viewing listings. I think that if the network reaches a sufficient size (thousands of nodes), retrieving listings won't be a problem. Hosts can simply throttle connections, and refuse to send out more than a certain number of listing to a single host in a certain time frame.
I don't see proof-of-burn as bad for the Bitcoin network. Proof-of-burn transactions are instantly pruneable, so they don't really put a burden on nodes (other than the 200 bytes they take up in storage space).
Re: A decentralized anonymous marketplace
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree and don't plan on using PoW other than in the proof of concept. V0.2 should use PoS because proof of burn (as a believe you are suggesting) is bad for the Bitcoin network (large number of unnecessary tx) and expensive (you don't want to pay the tx fee every time you view a listing). PoS doesn't require any tx in the Bitcoin network (ignoring those you used to earn the stake). Thanks for the comment. Let me kn…
> V0.2 should use PoS because proof of burn (as a believe you are suggesting) is bad for the Bitcoin network (large number of unnecessary tx) and expensive (you don't want to pay the tx fee every time you view a listing). My suggestion was related to ratings, not viewing listings. I think that if the network reaches a sufficient size (thousands of nodes), retrieving listings won't be a problem. Hosts can simply throt…
Yes, every object, listings, ratings, etc. should be PoS instead of PoW. I suppose the hosts can define their throttling in the contract they make with the seller, so that isn't my decision.
PoB tx usually do require a change output along with it's burn output, and even if we weren't concerned with that, 200 bytes is 1/5000th of a block meaning only 5000 objects can be broadcasted per 10 minute period (assuming everything in the bitcoin block is a PoB tx). In other words, it doesn't scale.
Re: A decentralized anonymous marketplace
#69Fun fact: the original Satoshi bitcoin code included a partially completed distributed market system. Check out the file market.cpp in version 0.1.0. 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…
The essay your talking about interest me. To be precise, I'm interested in knowing your point of view regarding the viability of a social network which database is stored in DHT.
edit: in my point of view, marketplace is just another social network.
Re: A decentralized anonymous marketplace
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
When has this ever worked in the real world? I mean, in theory parts of it are nice, but conflating it with the spam problem is probably not accurate; merchants will just pay for positive reviews for themselves and negative ones for competitors. I ask honestly: are there examples where this has worked? I feel like the much better system is to increase the available information about transaction and/or review volumes…
> When has this ever worked in the real world? I mean, in theory parts of it are nice, but conflating it with the spam problem is probably not accurate; merchants will just pay for positive reviews for themselves and negative ones for competitors. I ask honestly: are there examples where this has worked? eBay works this way [1], and I believe this is how Silk Road operated as well, although I'm not sure. Merchants wh…
Sorry I didn't see this before.
a) ebay does NOT work like this. you leave reviews of merchants when you've done business with them, not for pay.
b) silk road does not work like this.
c) you're now imposing a tax on the market which costs everyone more, disproportionately benefits the wealthiest, and generates confusion. great job.
d) how is this not clear? if you add a gold star to someone's review when they have actually purchased from a merchant through your system, that gold star can be evaluated in any number of ways and help weight reviews properly. like, numerically weighting authenticated reviews more heavily. or whatever. there's obviously a downside, which is that unlike yelp, nobody is using their real personality, and there's some benefit to changing ones' personality if one is worried about the legal consequences of ones' actions. but on silk road this doesn't appear to be a significant barrier -- there are enough persistent personalities that it's pretty easy to discern the credible from the questionable.
e) you didn't positively answer the original question: has this ever worked? it seems nice based on one single argument (tax on lying) but not based on all the ancillary problems...