I see several comments questioning the <i>legitimate</i> value of a peer-to-peer marketplace. Some cannot see any use other than illegal commerce (drugs, porn, etc).<p>It is true that such illicit trades will take advantage of that network but is it really impossible to envision <i>legal</i> business as the major activity? Yes, cars can be used as getaway vehicles from bank robberies and also smash terrorist bombs into government buildings. However, cars also have tons of other legitimate uses.<p>Consider that ebay has about 200 million users.[1] Their fees have been going up every year and they are now at 10% (which does not include the separate insertion fees.)[2]<p>If one can sell a <i>legal</i> item such as a $50 book on ebay, why not sell it on a p2p marketplace and avoid paying $5 of that sale to ebay? If not OpenBazaar or similar p2p architecture, what alternatives do folks propose?<p>Do 200 million ebay users have <i>lawful</i> reasons to avoid paying ebay commission fees?<p>At this point, I believe low-volume selling is too dependent on proprietary platforms such as ebay or amazonmarketplace. As an analogy using email, I'm glad that SMTP won over closed systems such as CompuServe, AOL, and Western Union's EasyLink. Even though SMTP email has many bad uses such as phishing, malware delivery, and spam, I'm still glad it won. The good uses outweigh the bad.<p>Can a more open platform for sellers <i>without the stigma of illegal activity</i> be realized?<p>[1]<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=ebay+"200+million+users"" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=ebay+"200+million+users"</a><p>[2]<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=ebay+raises+fees+10%25" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=ebay+raises+fees+10%25</a>
Hey HN, this is Sam Patterson, operations lead on OpenBazaar.<p>Please note that this open source project is about 6 months old, and not production ready. It has just started integrating Tor, but should not be considered private or secure yet.<p>We welcome testers, we are about to release 0.3.0 sometime in the next few days. Our Github is here:<p><a href="https://github.com/openbazaar/openbazaar" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/openbazaar/openbazaar</a><p>We've gotten a lot of attention from the recent dark net markets being shut down. As I've said elsewhere, viewing OpenBazaar as SR 3.0 misses the true potential of creating a protocol, network, and client that allows individuals or companies to conduct trade directly with each other online.<p>We welcome feedback on our project, I'm happy to answer questions, and of course we'd be delighted if you want to join us. Let's make trade free.
I think the interesting thing about these Dark Net markets is how they enable sellers to market their product and maintain their reputation without the need to "get out on the streets" and push their wares. It is fundamentally better for society.<p>What governments need to get over is the failed "War on drugs". Legalise and tax the lot. Decriminalise possession, release all prisoners on non-violent drug related internments. Provide health care support to help people come off drugs as we do with alcoholics/smokers.<p>Let's stop being so damn hypocritical about this.
Keep in mind, a lot of people are hyping OpenBazaar more than it deserves or is helpful. The basic question about OB no one has answered is: assuming they get it up and running and with a good security model, why will the mass of black-market - or legal - users ever use it, when using Amazon or something is easier and more familiar?<p>You may say that they'll use it so they don't have to worry about police, except black-market users' revealed preferences are that <i>they don't care</i>: SR2 was doing millions a month <i>without any escrow at all</i>, and multisig usage is uncommon even on the markets which support it (vendors generally estimate <10%). The users seem to simply not care. Why are they going to use OB?
<i>If authorities acted against OpenBazaar users, they could arrest individuals, but the network would survive.</i><p>This sounds exactly like the current physical marketplace for anything illegal. Individual drug dealers are arrested, sometimes even big distributor organizations are taken down, but the trade network always goes on.
Sensationalist title, just like saying "Bitcoin - an untouchable crypto-currency for drugs".<p>This has the potential to be used by everyone in the world to sell anything.
As someone passionate about decentralized systems, I'm curious how OpenBazaar would deal with, say, a marketplace for assassinations and other things that would clearly be illegal and unethical.<p>Can any distributed system deal with it? Probably best to leave it in place and expose such people, but who gets to decide which crimes warrant exposing the participants, and how would that even work? I can think about sting operations but that's about it.
Looks like they are also developing a Search API for OpenBazaar
<a href="https://search.bizarre.company" rel="nofollow">https://search.bizarre.company</a>
Untouchable by police? That's a pretty big claim. What would happen if the government were to round up some computers and control 50% or more of the network?
untouchable is such a overused word. everything is touchable. the government just has to order some products and track their origin using the mail system, get enough orders, you find the vicinity, spy on the drop off area and the businessman is bound to make mistakes, we are human after all. there are many ways to skin this cat.
untouchable is such a overused word. everything is touchable. the government just has to order some products and track their origin using the mail system, get enough orders, you find the vicinity, spy on the drop off area and the businessman is bound to make mistakes, we are human after all.
For my business, I order thousands of items on Amazon and Ebay per week. Even with the protections in place, sellers don't ship the items and then never respond/won't refund, I get the wrong items/broken items (and they refuse to let me send it back).<p>Why would I shop anywhere without these assurances?