Topic: Invest in OpenBazaar? (Read 4590 times)

Copied this answer from the nxtforum freemarket thread:

To my dismay, the core source seems to be closed currently with plans to open later.

There doesn't appear to be any code here, where is the code viewable online?

https://bitbucket.org/blackyblack/freemarket/src

Can people open issues, or make a fork, or submit pull requests to the NXT FreeMarket project?

https://bitbucket.org/blackyblack/freemarket/src

There are no sources...

https://bitbucket.org/blackyblack/freemarket

Thanks for your response.

Yes, I was pointing out why that isn't such a problem.

Blockchains are obviously awesome for many things, but we decided not to use the blockchain for storing information about product listings. Listings (or on our platform, Ricardian contracts) need to be able to change and be signed by multiple parties in a chain of commerce in order to provide an immutable record of trade. This wouldn't be able to be done quickly, at scale, with a blockchain.

If the only objection to running a peer to peer network is anonymity, there are many way to address this. First, you can join a peer to peer network and be anonymous; I2P, Freenet, Bittorrent and others have shown this. But more importantly, if you don't want to run a node for anonymity reasons, you won't have to. Services will exist that let you log into their node and conduct your business.

I looked for the NXT FreeMarket repository to see how they're dealing with problems like spamming the blockchain, reputation, escrow, multisig (does it use that?) price fluctuations, etc. I couldn't find it, is it open source? Can the community see how this product has been made?

I don't mean to dump on their product, I think we want as much competition in this space as possible. But creating a decentralized marketplace that is user friendly is very, very hard. We've had people using OpenBazaar for buying and selling real goods since August, but we still haven't gotten it to the point where we're calling it ready, and probably won't be for several more months.

Hi Sam, was your comment made in response to the issue I raised?  If so, I think it's worth pointing out that you also need to run a node to connect to FreeMarket but that once you list your items there, it is no longer necessary to run a node since the listings are stored in the NXT blockchain.  I am told that with OpenBazaar your node must remain online to keep your listings online because the listings are stored on the computer running the node instead of in the BTC blockchain.

Either a complete lunatic or, as Damelon points out, a 'Moneroman88' FUD technique: anti-Nxt'er pretends to be an insane pro-Nxt'er, thereby pissing off everyone.

And once again, peace and tranquility descends upon BTTland.

What... what was that?

Are we getting our own Moneroman in Nxt now?

Nope.  Openbazaar wants to use arbitrators (which is like 3rd party middleman).

Opensource (from the start/launch) decentralized markets using smart contracts are better,  no middleman.

Thanks Sam for clearing all that up. It sounds like a great project.

Hey folks, Sam Patterson here, I'm the operations lead on the OpenBazaar team. There's been a few misconceptions about OpenBazaar in this thread I'd like to clear up, and I'm happy to answer questions.

On the node issue: Yes, you need to either run a node yourself or connect to someone running a node in order to see the network. Right now, there aren't third party services for you to connect to through the web. However, this will undoubtedly occur at some point, and so users who don't care about decentralization will connect to a "gateway node" to conduct business, and people who don't trust third parties will run their own.

Also, running a node isn't like running a server. It's a small program that you can easily run on your own computer, easier than running a full Bitcoin node. It's very similar to a bittorrent client.

It's been suggested several times that OpenBazaar doesn't have code out yet. That's inaccurate, we're actually on our third beta release now. You can read more (and find the Windows version) here:

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

We're not claiming this is ready for real trade (though many items have been bought and sold on it) but if you check out our GitHub (on develop branch) you'll see that we have one of the most active projects in the entire Bitcoin ecosystem:

https://github.com/OpenBazaar/OpenBazaar/tree/develop

We're excited about what has been built so far, and the wonderful support we've gotten from the community. We hope that by Spring 2015 we've have a platform that the Bitcoin community will be able to fully embrace as the primary way to conduct business within the Bitcoin economy.

Oh, and to answer the original question of the thread: No, there's no way to invest in OpenBazaar. This is an open source project to unleash free trade on the world, it's not a way to get rich for the devs. No fees like other platforms, no need to be tied to a single altcoin like other platforms.

If true, that sounds a bit... risky. If you need to run a node in order to sell your items, then you are a target, possibly an identifiable one. This is exactly the structural flaw that SR, SR2, etc have. If you rely on a server, you will be found and taken down/prosecuted. The blockchain solves this particular problem.

The core interface is a web interface, yes, but the interface at fremarketlite.com is different. That one was not made by the core team, that's what I meant.

I have not yet tried either on a phone, but the core one is responsive, so I am hopeful that it will look good on a phone.

Without fees, any marketplace will be full of spam.

FreeMarket is "free as in speech," not "free as in beer." It is without restrictions, not without cost.

The fees are extremely low though. You're looking at 15 to 20 US cents to post an item and sell it. A buyer will pay about 2 cents. That's no matter how expensive the item is, and variable quantities will be in the next release, so if you sell several of an item, the fees to post per item will be even lower. Post 100 of an item, and you're paying 0.02 cents per item.

Doesn't the core FreeMarket interface work via a browser pointed to localhost like NRS does?  If so, that's a web interface.

The web interface was made by that same user. The core devs didn't make it.

I was very disappointed to read that in order to sell something on OpenBazaar, you have to set up a node and keep it running all the time.  If your node goes offline, so do your item listings apparently:

http://forum.openbazaar.org/index.php?p=/discussion/105/need-a-permanent-node-to-set-up-a-store

That seems like a potentially huge privacy/security hole and it's not what I'd considered decentralized.



Which are there besides OpenBazaar and FreeMarket?