I own a screen printing business and listed some shirts on the market place. I am very impressed with the marketplace and it makes me excited to be invested and now involved in Bitbay (technically I'm a Bitbay merchant, right). I'm also invested in another decentralized marketplace crytpo and Bitbay is light years ahead of that project. I think the future is very bright for Bitbay...
I have a question or two about the market itself. If someone places an order with me, will there be an opportunity for them to specify what size shirt they want or what color if there are color variations? Can the buyer converse with me once they place the order? It's hard to tell what happens when an order is placed until someone places one with me.
Another question: Right now there is currently no fee to list an item. Will this always be the case or is there a plan to add a fee? It seems like some sort of fee will be necessary to deter spammy/excessive posts. Just wondering...
Another thought: The double deposit escrow is a really cool idea to get two parties who know nothing about each other to trust each other in order to conduct business and transact. Both parties have to put some skin in the game so it's in their best interest to make sure the transaction goes smoothly. It's design to keep everybody honest, protect both parties and eliminate bad actors. But what's to prevent someone from abusing this system to drive their competition out of business, similar to the way Amazon sells things at loss sometimes until their target competitor has to throw in the towel.
For example what if a large/wealthy merchant placed a substantial dollar amount worth of orders with a smaller/less wealthy competitor, there by locking up a bunch of Bay from both parties in a series of double deposit escrow contracts. The small/less wealthy merchant packages up the orders and sends them out, thinking he's going to make a bunch of money. When the evil wealthy merchant receives the goods, he disputes some arbitrary thing about the order and refuses to release the locked up Bay from the double deposit escrow contract, screwing the smaller merchant. Yes the larger/wealthy merchant would lose money in this case, but they are willing to take the hit in order to cripple their competition, because it would benefit them more in the long run. The smaller/less wealthy merchant would take a big hit, losing the Bay they locked up in the contract and the product/goods that they sent to bad actor. If a really large/wealthy merchant did this sort of attack on a smaller competitor enough, couldn't they essentially use the double deposit escrow system to pay to put their competition out of business? I know that this is an unlikely scenario and doesn't make a lot of sense, but capitalism is strange and sometimes makes no sense. If Amazon is willing to sell things at a loss to kill off the competition, it seems feasible that a large merchant might be willing to eternally lock up some Bay in some contracts to eliminate a smaller competing merchant by locking up all of his working capital in the same contracts, or am I just overly pessimistic about the spirit of capitalism?
I know the market is not complete yet and there are probably many more features that will be added. Is there someplace to give feedback about he market and see what feedback others have given? Looking forward to seeing the market progress...
I have a question or two about the market itself. If someone places an order with me, will there be an opportunity for them to specify what size shirt they want or what color if there are color variations? Can the buyer converse with me once they place the order? It's hard to tell what happens when an order is placed until someone places one with me.
Another question: Right now there is currently no fee to list an item. Will this always be the case or is there a plan to add a fee? It seems like some sort of fee will be necessary to deter spammy/excessive posts. Just wondering...
Another thought: The double deposit escrow is a really cool idea to get two parties who know nothing about each other to trust each other in order to conduct business and transact. Both parties have to put some skin in the game so it's in their best interest to make sure the transaction goes smoothly. It's design to keep everybody honest, protect both parties and eliminate bad actors. But what's to prevent someone from abusing this system to drive their competition out of business, similar to the way Amazon sells things at loss sometimes until their target competitor has to throw in the towel.
For example what if a large/wealthy merchant placed a substantial dollar amount worth of orders with a smaller/less wealthy competitor, there by locking up a bunch of Bay from both parties in a series of double deposit escrow contracts. The small/less wealthy merchant packages up the orders and sends them out, thinking he's going to make a bunch of money. When the evil wealthy merchant receives the goods, he disputes some arbitrary thing about the order and refuses to release the locked up Bay from the double deposit escrow contract, screwing the smaller merchant. Yes the larger/wealthy merchant would lose money in this case, but they are willing to take the hit in order to cripple their competition, because it would benefit them more in the long run. The smaller/less wealthy merchant would take a big hit, losing the Bay they locked up in the contract and the product/goods that they sent to bad actor. If a really large/wealthy merchant did this sort of attack on a smaller competitor enough, couldn't they essentially use the double deposit escrow system to pay to put their competition out of business? I know that this is an unlikely scenario and doesn't make a lot of sense, but capitalism is strange and sometimes makes no sense. If Amazon is willing to sell things at a loss to kill off the competition, it seems feasible that a large merchant might be willing to eternally lock up some Bay in some contracts to eliminate a smaller competing merchant by locking up all of his working capital in the same contracts, or am I just overly pessimistic about the spirit of capitalism?
I know the market is not complete yet and there are probably many more features that will be added. Is there someplace to give feedback about he market and see what feedback others have given? Looking forward to seeing the market progress...
On the markets client you download you can absolutely sort out details of the deal with the client through the messaging system. On the online markets I'm sure a similar feature is intended and that market will also be decentralized. There is no reason to ever charge fees. I will absolutely never endorse this. There was a few different anti-spam methods laid out in my specifications. The first is simply requiring progressively higher POW the more orders you post (each time doubling it) or simply limiting the IP address if they appear to spam. Another option is forcing a timelocked payment to yourself so that can make a user only temporarily have to tie up funds if they post too much. Currently in the downloadable client because it's Bitmessage and Bitmessage requires POW per kilobyte, no defense is required. On the web markets any of the above options is acceptable.
In the markets client, there is a feedback system. On the web markets a similar system will be used. Most importantly as pointed out by Doc you can track how many contracts a user blows up by looking at the blockchain and simply force them to dramatically increase their deposits the more they blow up contracts. If some competition is very wealthy and tries this there is a saying that goes "a fool and his money will soon be parted". The idea since the beginning was always to transition society from a world run by liars to a world run by honest people. This transition no matter how slow, can start to happen with double deposit. Since this is a game that favors the honest party. So the liars may go down kicking and screaming, but they will eventually go down if they use this system.
