Topic: [ANN] OpenBazaar - A Decentralized Market Platform (Read 20108 times)

Operations Lead Sam Patterson is going to speak at the upcoming CryptoEcon2020 in Hanoi/Vietnam this weekend.



Source: https://bitcoinsaigon.org/interview-sam-patterson/

It is a good idea, I support it.

The Dapper Weekly | Ep 16 - OpenBazaar Review (When the DarkNet mixes with Blockchain))

Open Bazaar has received an overall rating of 3.8/5 - A well developed app that needs some more pushes for corporate adoption to really take off

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvAGPwmPBN0

Open Bazaar Changing E Commerce with Crypto: https://www.publish0x.com/why-openbazaar-is-ebays-biggest-competitor/open-bazaar-changing-e-commerce-crypto-xomjmo

Why do you ask for a fork when you already can connect through TOR and use\create search engines with no censorship on illicit goods?

i will check it out, i've been a fan of openbazaar ever since i found out about it because it could really make a big impact on mass crypto adoption

OpenBazaar version 2.2.2 was just released, and this update gives users several new improvements to the cryptocurrency trading feature. This release also includes other improvements and bug fixes; for full details read the release notes posted below.
https://openbazaar.org/blog/New-OpenBazaar-Release-Enables-Trading-1500-Cryptocurrencies/

BTC commerce flourishes more when dealing in illegal substances or drugs.

Is there any developer out there willing to fork OpenBazaar and bring it back to its roots as a decentralized darknet market?

If you did not know, OpenBazaar was forked from a project called DarkMarket who were also the developers behind the DarkWallet.

one good thing about crypto currencies is that its mostly decentralized. and people would really flock specially when its free of charge.

According to this article on NewsBTC from December, BCH and a few other altcoins (Zcash and maybe LTC) will be added to OpenBazaar, but BTC won't be "dropped" from it. On their blog, they write that their long term goal is that the software, in the future, should be "coin-agnostic" (working with any cryptocurrency).

That's, in my opinion, the best way to go. For bigger payments BTC still is the most secure, accepted and convenient cryptocurrency.

but the transaction fees are so high

Why are there so few posts on here?

I have read somewhere that you guys are going to shift to Bitcoin Cash as the preferred payment option now or is this just

a rumour? I hope it is just a rumour, because I am surely not going to support a platform where the merchants are only

allowed to accept one type of coin. BTC is the worlds strongest coin and I think it will be a mistake to turn your back on that.

That's great news.

Though one observation, especially in the documentation in Git. Why is it that the term 'linux' automatically cirmvents all other distributions and suddenly means 'ubuntu' or 'debian'?

We run RHEL based servers. Centos 7 x64 and Fedora 26 x64, yet there is NO mention of anything along the lines of linux being these distributions also. Apart from that, not even a single mention of possible installs using the RHEL based systems. If there is, I cannot seem to find them.

Apart from that, this seems like a massive jump forward, and we will be looking at setting up a test system, and it will be via Centos 7 x64 (Server) with Fedora 26 x64 (Client).

Much appreciated for the OpenBazaar team from Adelaide Australia

#crysx

Openbazaar Sees a Variety of New Vendors After Privacy Enhancements

https://news.bitcoin.com/openbazaar-variety-new-vendors-after-privacy-enhancements/


This past September the cryptocurrency-based decentralized marketplace, Openbazaar, launched its 2.0 platform with a slew of new features. Now a couple of months later, the marketplace seems to be seeing some significant growth as vendors from Darknet markets are starting to flock to the protocol’s benefits.

Privacy Enhancements Give Openbazaar a Boost
Openbazaar Sees a Variety of New Vendors After Privacy EnhancementsThis week news.Bitcoin.com took a tour through the search listings held on the Openbazaar 2.0 platform. The new version has three search engines including OB1, Duo, and Raw Flood which give users more depth while searching for products using Openbazaar. In addition to the improved search features, the platform now utilizes the Tor browser, has a native bitcoin wallet, Shapeshift integration, and offline stores. Just by visiting Openbazaar a user can see that these attributes have increased the amount of vendors and users exponentially, as there are more products to peruse than a just a few months ago........

I added OpenBazaar to the Cheddur app (https://www.cheddur.com/) given the details I could find on the website. This will allow more people to learn about OpenBazaar and get started. We’ve also linked all of the coins, apps, etc. that OpenBazaar supports, this way new users can discover OpenBazaar based on the coins they own, where they live, or the devices they use.

Screenshots:

https://i.imgur.com/m7TBSn8.png

https://i.imgur.com/AwieEuJ.png

If you've used OpenBazaar, don't forget to leave a review! The more popular the service is (via ratings), the higher it will appear in search results

I think Syscoin will be the #1 Decentralized marketpleace and will see great success. You should check it out guys. It has just growed so fast and they have marketing going on around the world now. They cooperated succesfully with big organizations and just Joined Jaxx Digital Asset Command Centre. Now also its Blockchain Foundry joins Microsoft,Blockstack as a founding member of the Decentralised Identity Foundation.
If you follow their Twitter, Facebook, Ann page and #SlackChannel then you will easily realize that Syscoin continues to be among the most professional, consistently delivering teams in crypto. Would be supercool to see if you cooperate together  

As I read here, the Bitbay feature you probably mean is the "Rolling Peg", but it seems more like a nubits-like mechanism to peg the currency to the USD.

My feature would not peg any currency to Bitcoin but only give an opportunity to merchants to give price guarantees.

Ideally, there would be also a "flexible backing" system: a mechanism that allows merchants to guarantee a price only if the BTC price moves downwards, but if it moves upwards automatically decreases the price (like in LocalBitcoins but with the "backing" feature enabled).

An example:
- An app developer sells his app for 0.001 BTC.
- The Bitcoin price goes up from 1000 to 1100 USD (1000 * 1.1)
- The developer's app now automatically costs 0.000909 BTC (0.001 / 1.1)
- The Bitcoin price falls back to 1000 USD
- The developer can choose that in this kind of event the price stays for the "guarantee period" (e.g. 24 hours) at 0.000909 BTC.

The advantage for the merchant is that he won't lose sales in rally periods, because his price relative to the USD then is stable - but he would win sales if the price goes down, because he gives users the opportunity to buy his goods/services for a lower price in USD. Again, this system would mostly benefit sellers of digital goods and other goods with low or zero marginal production costs.

But for now, a simple price guarantee system would be a cool first step.

well ...

these are interesting ideas ...

i think we both have some research to do ...

#crysx

No, there would be no blockchain records - the "peg" would only exist in the OpenBazaar system. It would be completely decentralized, every merchant could decide if he wants to give a price guarantee or not and for how much time.

Of course, there would be an incentive needed to enforce that "price guarantee". So at least it should be visible if a merchant, in the past, has denied to deliver a good or service for a "pegged" price.

But as announcements on Internet selling platforms are legally binding, that should not be a major problem - it could be compared to the treatment of eBay scams where sellers deny to deliver if the auction outcome is too low for them. And I have also hopes that most of the "peggers" would treat such a system as a marketing tool to position themselves as "true Bitcoin supporters".


I didn't heard from that initiative, but it would be awesome if there already is such a system in development. Will investigate, thanks for the hint!

Hey there, what ports should I open for this to work btw? Also what kind? TCP/UDP?
I'm using Azure and endpoints are really annoying to work with

wouldnt that be the same as price / coin pegging on the blockchain? ...

with the likes of david zimbeck at the helm of such developments in bitbay / blackcoin - it sounds like something that is already there in those developments ...

of course - i may be completely wrong ...

#crysx

I had (already a long time ago) an idea for merchant platforms. Perhaps it could be implemented in OpenBazaar?

The idea is to give sellers the option to back the Bitcoin price. (Important: It would be optional, not mandatory!)

Everyone who sets a fixed price in Bitcoin for an item is technically a "backer" of the Bitcoin price. But in the actual configuration of OpenBazaar and similar sites we cannot know if the seller won't change the price if the BTC/USD exchange rate goes down.

The idea is to give the seller the opportunity to guarantee a fixed price for a period of time, e.g. 24 or 48 hours. These sellers would then get a highlighting as a "Bitcoin backer".

It would be specially convenient for software/Apps/Games developers and digital media (ebook, video, porn etc.) sellers, because they have no marginal costs and every sale of a copy means profit for them. In the case of a (e.g.) ~15% crash they can expect a boom in sales.

There are even more complex "backing mechanisms" I can imagine ("flexible backing" techniques) but I want first to know if there is interest (or I could also start a thread about it as this kind of mechanism could also be integrated in centralized platforms).

Just created a new Telegram group about OpenBazaar, feel free to join https://telegram.me/OpenBazaarMarket

ROKOS v6 Magic Flavors
Final tests done, to be released in the next days as soon as packing its done.

Permanent Integrated: OpenBazaar

Learn more about OpenBazaar at: http://rokos.space/cryptocurrencies.html

ROKOS Github:  https://github.com/okcashpro/ROKOS-OK-Bitcoin-Fullnode

OpenBazaar - 1 click / simple use - Integrated to menus

I got an error while installing


Please help me resolve it

we second that ...

#crysx

can someone post a screen or video with the usage of the app? i want to see how it work exactly, all the details

i can't find nothing on youtube about this beta version, there are only old version...

Question:
I've been checking out Cryptothrift and yeah, out of two transactions I got scammed on one. I also remember that Bitbay or whatever it was called was full of scammers as well.
I think the most crucial need for OpenBazaar to be successful is eliminating scammers from day one, because frankly, nobody will use it if their first experience is a scam.
How can this be achieved? Especially if it is open with no governing body making rules?

I should add that the person who scammed me on Cryptothrift has a 37 positive feedback.

https://blog.openbazaar.org/openbazaar-beta-0-4-0-portobello-is-released/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/33dir7/the_openbazaar_04_beta_has_just_been_released_for/

Thanks! Hurry, this will be a game changer for Bitcoin. PayPal was nothing before eBay adopted it.

Reports from reddit indicate end of this year when the regular buyers and sellers can jump onboard.

Hey when will this launch past Beta? Can I start selling on it now? Since I detest PayPal I have no options to sell my stuff anymore! (eBay doesn't allow checks or cash anymore.)

here ...

though there isnt much movement i must admit ...

#crysx

Where is the forum? The link redirects to the blog    if I have a problem where I can ask for help?

Bump for a worthy & potentially revolutionary software development project!

I had nearly forgotten about OpenBazaar but stumbled across FrankenMint's review the other day and got intrigued all over again! Have to post here to follow along with any updates and I am going to try to do a build of it to try out soon!

we have been watching this software develop over many months - and will now implement a testing phase for us soon ...

its an impressive package that looks like it has HUGE potential ...

eager to see what features this will have in the full release ...

#crysx

I been planning on wanting to start something like this...Thank god you guys have this but I am an idiot when it comes to linux etc.

Will you guys have a windows version so I can drag to my server and edit the configs to my database?

Also if you guys are accepting donations I would like to fund you guys 1k-7k depending on how well this project goes and if it has the features I am looking for.

The killer application we are waiting for! 

Windows installer came out shortly after I posted that here:

https://blog.openbazaar.org/beta-3-0-tabriz-is-released/

First download and install this dependency:
http://www.gpg4win.org/

No windows installer but I'm going to try this out later ... https://github.com/OpenBazaar/OpenBazaar/wiki/Windows-support

https://github.com/OpenBazaar/OpenBazaar

Go get Beta 3 (Tabriz) now!

FYI - Still no Windows installer.
Build Instructions-
https://github.com/OpenBazaar/OpenBazaar/wiki/Build-Instructions

Just setup OpenBazaar Beta 2.0. Looking good!  
Let's get this out there! Received an email from eBay saying they are splitting from PayPal in 2015...
Once OpenBazaar is up and running they could just close eBay, I won't use it anymore! 

BTW I tried to join the OpenBazaar forum and clicked on send confirmation email maybe 100 times but no email ever arrives.
It's been a month now, any chance to be able to participate in the forum? I'd like to join the discussion and give feedback from my test.
Thanks.

It is not a business. It is an open source software.

What is your business plan if you do not charge fees?

Should be in December if all go well.

All good figured it out.  Script works just needs love and attention, once /html/ is the top level of the document root of your virtual host it's fine.

More efforts need to be put into "idiot-proofing" the installer.  Please.  Make it do checks to see if it will fail before even proceeding.  I had no idea what I was getting into when I ran it and now I want to wipe the whole OS and start over.

How about for starters, when you run the script have it ask where the files from the git repo will go, or even say in the script what folder the person should be in before grabbing files and just putting them wherever.  Have the default entry be the current path and let them hit "enter" to choose that they are going to put the files there, or allow them to change it.  Does that make sense?
 
To be careful, I started a temp directory somewhere, and all the files ended up going there.  The script ran about 1800 lines of total chaos without any user input except "are you sure you want this set of 100 packages?" a few times over.  Just do apt-get -y, to force the script to install those packages, why give the user an option that will only cause it to fail if they say no?

Even just an "are you sure you want to install OpenBazaar HERE?" option, with a brief description of what is going to happen.  

I was under the impression that it was okay to run this in a subdirectory of an existing server.  Apparently not, and I only glanced at the code but things went all chaotic pretty fast.

So, I had a "successful install" via the script and, of course, my webserver was not configured to display anything in that random temp folder, so I figured it couldn't hurt to just force-copy all files to a folder where they could be viewed.  I moved them to a folder like "openbazaar", so I could see them at my.web.server.ip/openbazaar/ and I saw that it there is an HTML folder.  Click it, and I see stuff!  But no CSS.  In the HTML, apparently, all the include javascripts, CSS, and so on were hardcoded to /html/css/filenameexample.css

So if in your browser it looks like my.webserver.ip/openbazaar/html/index.html, you have nothing but errors because your files would have to exist at my.webserver.ip/html/css/filenameexample.css in order to work.  If you delete the /html/ part and just use a relative link css/filenameexample.css, it works perfectly.  To some degree.  It looks like the rest of the program really wants to be the top level of the server without any subdirectories so I think I'm going to wipe and start over, just wanted to leave this tidbit here so that if you think (like I did) that you can just run the script from any random folder and expect the configuration to work on the first try.  

Does anyone have any useful step-by-step instructions w/o using the script?  It says "The following instructions are for advanced users, and are not up to date." in the official instructions.  Can someone maybe bring them up to date?

I've been following open bazaar for several months. I shall create my own shop online sometimes, but I wonder when the marketplace will effectively open, and leave the beta stage?

I totally support this thanks a lot!

Too many scam coins out there. Need some standards like a minimum twenty million dollar market cap and at least two years in existence.

If privacy is what you want look at Darkcoin or Xcurrency.

SO anybody set one up yet? Let's check it out

interesting

this has potential to be huge

How much data do you envision being stored in the Ricardian contract?   

For example, many auction listings contain images and even video of the product.

There seems to be a couple issues with storing these in the contract:

1) A video or large image is a lot of data to store in ascii form (base64?) via json encoding.

2) The contract is supposed to be both human and machine readable.  The image/video cannot be read by a human without software interpretation.   Presenting the contract to the user seems to require some care because either you need to truncate/hide the encoded binary data or else display it and look really ugly.   Maybe solve this via a "human" and "raw" view of the contract?


I don't know if these are problems, but just something I wondered about how OpenBazaar handles it.....

yes - im interested to know that also ...

granitecoin ( grn ) is what i trade in normally ... but convert a lot of others to btc ...

crysx

If a merchant and buyer are in the same city, would it be possible to add the option for "Face2Face" trade. If the merchant marks an option to allow F2F they could specify a store location or a contact page for meeting in a public place. This way they can save on shipping if they are in the same location. So instead of filling in shipping information they just coordinate meeting.

This is a nice idea, but if I am selling "normal" bits and pieces, I don't really need a un-censorable market place. I like the arbiter feature, still reading about it now.

A bitcoin marketplace.

Quite interseting to see this project develop.

Also other crypto or just Bitcoin?

Hello,

I'd like to give some suggestions:

- Give to the seller the option to sell items at the price reference of btc-e, bitstamp, etc. As a seller, It would take alot of time to check on a daily basis the price of Bitcoin and change the price at the Bazaar.

- Don't make it zero fees. Make it 0,5% or something like that to pay for escrows, arbitrages, developers and marketing.

And now the question round:

- Once the buyer purchase the item, and send the payment to the multi signature address, then the buyer ships the item and request the payment.
How and when are the funds released? What about virtual purchases, such as online games accounts?

- Do I need to have the OpenBazaar open 24/7 to have my shop listed, or once it's listed it's permanent until deleted or disabled at X inactivity level?

- Once the project is finished, or, at least, few months of running stable, will clients be able to purchase from their web browser, such as eBay, or do they need to download the Bazaar software to view the listings?


I'm kinda excited, eBay needs to be replaced by a Bitcoin by a marketplace like this.

Hey frankenmint, thanks for trying out the platform.

If you're unable to see other marketplaces, then you likely have a an issue with setting up UPnP or port forwarding. There are approximately 25 stores on the network with various products right now (I just bought some honey from a beekeeper in Ohio).

If you like I can help walk you through getting it working correctly. Or stop by the IRC room #openbazaar on Freenode.

This is Sam Patterson by the way, I'm Operations Lead on the project. I just joined in order to weigh in on OpenBazaar.

If it's using bitmessage does it mean users have to sync and get messages within a few days before they are lost for any communications between vendor and customer?

I'm making a writeup but literally it can't get too much easier without making a windows direct exe file.  So far you simply need linux and to run an ./configure script in the folder you've created then simply type ./run and it will but loaded for you

It really makes me happy such things getting developed.I would be loving to use it asap and do some tradings and shopping as well P2P

I don't know for sure but since it is in beta stage it is currently for using by people that they expect to have a better understanding of software (not your usual eBay buyer for example) but for the final release I imagine it will be simpler. The post says that they will provide pre compiled versions that can be downloaded in the future for final release.

Thanks!

Do you know if this will be easier for the common folks at some point ? Seems like a lot of steps to set-up shop.

https://blog.openbazaar.org/openbazaar-beta-1-0-tutorial/

How does one get started setting up a shop on OpenBazaar?

Great looking project I think that this will provide a great opportunity for members of the community to buy and sell using bitcoin in a simplistic way.

[reserved]

Since no one else stepped up to reply 1st - thoughts notes and ideas to be posted here soon.

update: Here's my review for those who are on the fence: http://honeybadgerofmoney.com/2014/09/04/open-bazaar-anonymous-marketplace-1st-impressions-review/

If you're too lazy to read or see the pictures, imo it's just not ready to use yet, its fun to try out and I'd like to be able to see other marketplaces but as it stands I can only see my own stuff which leads me to question if anyone can see anything anyone else has off the network.

https://blog.openbazaar.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/logo.png

Zero Fees. Zero Censorship.

Project:

OpenBazaar is an open source project to create a decentralized market platform—using Bitcoin—that has no fees and cannot be censored.

Intro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuRgHbTU9pk

Teaser
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAGij8FSrNc

Features:

The following list includes existing and future features that we plan (and hope in some cases) to support within OpenBazaar:

• Overview: http://www.slideshare.net/openbazaar/open-bazaar
• Kademila-like P2P system
• Reverse Index Distributed Hast Table (DHT) for Contract Listings
• Multisignature escrow addresses
• Ricardian Contracts
• Triple-Entry Accounting
• Notary and Arbitration Marketplace
• Polycentric market law (precedent shopping)
• Notary Voting Pools and Arbitration Panels
• Sophisticated Web-of-Trust System
• Reputation Pledges and Surety Bonds
• BitMessage Integration
• TOR, I2P
• Markets: fixed price sales, auctions, P2P lending, service tendering, distributed currency exchanges, securities, crowdfunding...

OpenBazaar has an ambitious feature-set that it is pursuing. If you would like to help us out in any of these areas, please hop on the IRC and/or Github to get involved!

Contact:

• Email: [email protected]
• IRC: #openbazaar (Freenode)
• Website: https://openbazaar.org
• Github: https://github.com/OpenBazaar/OpenBazaar
• Blog: http://blog.openbazaar.org/
• Forum: http://forum.openbazaar.org
• Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/openbazaar; http://www.reddit.com/r/BazaarMarkets/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/openbazaar
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnw_d1lLMFhqkL5QdsuIInQ

Team Members:

• Brian Hoffman [hoffmabc] - Project Lead
• Sam Patterson [SamPatt] - Operations Lead
• Dr Washington Sanchez [drwasho] - OpenBazaar Labs
• Dionysis Zindros [dionyziz] - Developer; Web-of-Trust Architect
• Angel Leon [gubatron] - Developer/Architect
• George Chatzisofroniou [Sophron] - Developer
• Braden Glasgow [bglassy] - Web Development Lead
• Jonas Nick [nickler] - Developer
• Delain Markos [DelainM] - Developer; OpenBazaar Labs

Project Status:

• OpenBazaar is in beta 1.0. You can read our beta guide here: https://blog.openbazaar.org/openbazaar-beta-1-0-tutorial/
• The purpose of beta 1.0 is to test out the installation of the client and discover any major bugs with what we have so far.
• Things are still a little bumpy with beta 1.0, so please be patient as we tackle each issue and bug systematically.
• We will be releasing new beta versions each month until the end of the year, where we will release version 1.0.

Support:

• While we appreciate donations, we would prefer additional developers and testers to help us iron out the bugs and start working of new features and markets to implement.
• Direct donations: https://blockchain.info/address/16uniUFpbhrAxAWMZ9qEkcT9Wf34ETB4Tt
• Tip4Commit: https://tip4commit.com/projects/728

Update #1:

• Instructions for setting up and running an OpenBazaar node on a VPS:

https://blog.openbazaar.org/guide-how-to-setuprun-an-openbazaar-node-on-a-vps/