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OpenBazaar is Open for Business

blog.openbazaar.org

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Re: OpenBazaar is Open for Business

#6

Post by jerguismi »

johndevor wrote: post #4
jerguismi wrote: post #3

Can anybody summarize the benefits? Too lazy to install the software myself. As I understand, there is an escrow. Is it trustless/multi-sig based? What about privacy/encryption? Can anybody be an escrow agent?

It's cheaper from what I understand.

Can the escrow agents determine their own fees?

Re: OpenBazaar is Open for Business

#7

Post by 55555 »

jerguismi wrote: post #3

Can anybody summarize the benefits? Too lazy to install the software myself. As I understand, there is an escrow. Is it trustless/multi-sig based? What about privacy/encryption? Can anybody be an escrow agent?

I think in the long-term their plan is to be a fully decentralized marketplace, like a darknet market which can't be taken down (ofcourse they don't explicitly condone the sale of illegal goods).

One of the most impressive parts so far to me is the strong UX though. It feels a bit like browsing instagram+etsy.

Re: OpenBazaar is Open for Business

#8

Post by antonios »

jerguismi wrote: post #3

Can anybody summarize the benefits? Too lazy to install the software myself. As I understand, there is an escrow. Is it trustless/multi-sig based? What about privacy/encryption? Can anybody be an escrow agent?

Anybody can be an escrow agent, yes. Fees are customizeable.

Re: OpenBazaar is Open for Business

#9

Post by adrusi »

jerguismi wrote: post #3

Can anybody summarize the benefits? Too lazy to install the software myself. As I understand, there is an escrow. Is it trustless/multi-sig based? What about privacy/encryption? Can anybody be an escrow agent?

It's like a darknet market (Silk Road, AlphaBay, etc) that can't be taken down by law enforcement. Or it's like a clearnet market (Ebay) that doesn't take a cut and works with bitcoin.

It looks like it uses multisig as a form of escrow [1], but the third party isn't in any way affiliated with openbazaar, just whoever the vendor and customer can agree to trust. It looks like users have to find a third party on their own, out-of-band [2]. I can see this working for small vendors, but I don't see how it would work with large vendors without the emergence of 1–3 large escrow services, which would diminish some of the benefits of decentralization.

This kind of multisig-based escrow will never be able to compete with Ebay. On Ebay, customers don't realize that they're paying Ebay to be a moderator because it's included in the price tag. On OpenBazaar they will be forced to pay attention to the escrow fee. I also fear that it will be impossible for escrow services to develop the necessary level of trust without being forced on vendors by the marketplace and still compete with the customer-favoring escrow that Ebay has.

It competes much better with darknet marketplaces, since it eliminates the possibility of sudden cash-outs or FBI raids on the scales that other markets have seen. They should accept that that's where they'll be successful and integrate some kind of anonymizing layer, probably tor, maybe i2p.

[1] https://blog.openbazaar.org/what-is-openbazaar/

[2] https://openbazaar.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/207548366

Re: OpenBazaar is Open for Business

#10

Post by brighton36 »

adrusi wrote: post #9
jerguismi wrote: post #3

Can anybody summarize the benefits? Too lazy to install the software myself. As I understand, there is an escrow. Is it trustless/multi-sig based? What about privacy/encryption? Can anybody be an escrow agent?

It's like a darknet market (Silk Road, AlphaBay, etc) that can't be taken down by law enforcement. Or it's like a clearnet market (Ebay) that doesn't take a cut and works with bitcoin. It looks like it uses multisig as a form of escrow [1], but the third party isn't in any way affiliated with openbazaar, just whoever the vendor and customer can agree to trust. It looks like users have to find a third party on their o…

None of this is true. It's a web browser and server protocol for hosting web sites that can't be crawled by google. It is trivially censored. I have no idea who needs this.
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