Please let me know when we can safely and securely buy weed on there. I could use some.
SilkRoad does that pretty well actually.
As much as on Ebay. Open Bazaar will attempt to use cryptographic tools to lower the risks but no marketplace can claim to be scammer free, even physical ones.
Correct ebay scams can work in various ways and also as a seller you have ebay itself scamming you by putting everything on the seller if a buyer is unhappy for whatever reason. I'd think twice before selling a high priced item on ebay these days.
With openBazer, every escrow will be somewhat different. If you were to present one set of facts to three people who act as escrow you would probably get three different results. None of them would likely be able to justify their results with a written policy or procedure that both the buyer and seller was aware of prior to using his services. This essentially makes it easy to try to scam as someone could simply make a bunch of shell accounts, use an escrow that they know will act in their favor and carry out the scam many times.
Unless it requires both party to agree on an escrow and/or add randomization to the escrow selection process. It should be enough to make it impossible for someone to scam that way with a systemic approach.
It is possible but it will be a very inefficient way of scamming. Don’t forget that escrows will also have a reputation system. Would you deal with someone having a bad reputation that is proposing you an escrow that also have a bad reputation or no reputation at all?
I think the risks for these situations are kind of low but very present. That's also why I'm very curious to see how the escrow reputation system will work and if/how what you described will addressed.
