I just checked the github post and one of the committers to openbazaar-go has left a nice lengthy comment explaining why/how[1].
Hopefully the people interested in Nile just put their support behind OpenBazaar instead.
[1] https://github.com/open-source-ideas/open-source-ideas/issue...
So they can use the OpenBazaar backend but still have the local focus they want by making a new front end.
We've been working on decentralized ecommerce for a long time and I would love for a fresh group of developers to take a look at it and give us their thoughts. It's all MIT licensed open source.
It seems like it could just be generalized and tied into the reputation system[0]. Basically just let users claim they've paid and let buyers claim they've received payment through whatever outside-platform method.
[0]: https://www.openbazaar.org/blog/decentralized-reputation-in-...
The idea of a open, distributed market, is great. But the reality of scammers, cheaters, etc. is a big hurdle to over come. One of the great things about Amazon is the customer service, I don't really worry about not getting a product, or if I need to return an item to Amazon I am also confident that it won't be an issue. This seems really hard to accomplish in a distributed system with lots of small "shops".
There has been discussion on whether they accept other forms of payment[0] (probably lots and lots of times), and supposedly they'll take PRs. Maybe someone should write an external payment API that really just acts like a dummy "blockchain" and works off of human verifications (along with some sort of trust score).
That, or someone could theoretically create a blockchain that did nothing but validate payments on other platforms (I have no idea how it would work but it seems possible), so a payment on the imaginary blockchain would equal a confirmed payment on some payment platform with sufficient API support.
[EDIT]- found another thread[1]
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBazaar/comments/2lddjy/besides_...
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBazaar/comments/531vui/openbaza...
As long as it stays two or three this is a good thing. If it turns into twelve I’ll be right there beside you with a torch and a pitchfork. Until then I’m sticking with popcorn.
It took four years to get there so rebuilding from scratch seems unwise when it's open source and you could add you own improvements or just fork it.
But yes, OpenBazaar currently isn't built for local communities. A feature we want to add eventually.
Admirable goal, but good luck getting wide enough adoption to achieve viability.
Nothing kills this delusion more than spending a year building something that you can’t seem to successfully market... multiple times. Then you realize there’s almost zero value in the technical part, and you can only chuckle at HN comments arguing about Python vs Node as if that’s the crux of a new business.
I definitely relate to this. I use Go a fair amount, and any conversation about Go on /r/programming invites a whole bunch of "every product built on a language without generics is doomed to fail". While generics would be a nice feature to my mind, I like Go for the tooling and the ecosystem, which are still an insignificant contribution to the success of a commercial product, but still many times more significant than the type system (and I'm a fan of type systems too).
maybe your marketing has zero value because you're doing it wrong
I think it's not absurd to picture a different market
And you're right that adoption is the hardest part. OpenBazaar has had about 55k people using it since last November when the 2.0 version launched.
My team is working on an hyperlocal e-commerce system that connects small stores with people in their neighborhoods. Delivery is limited to walking or bike distance performed by the vendors themselves.
Cairo is full of small vendors in every street. Most of people living in high rises. You can get everything delivered already.
At the first stage we will just save vendors from taking orders via the phone by hand by allowing them to receive orders on their phone. The next step is to create credit system that eliminate the wastes of vendors or customers when they don't have exact change.
They partner up with local businesses for the goods and bike courier services for the delivery.
The former would be mundane, the later a great metaphor.
Looks like this is not true, at least the Ob river (3,650 km) and the Yenisei river (3,438 km) are major rivers flowing from South to North (Both top 10 rivers).
So not sure where you did get that piece about the Nile from.
Somehow pointing out the Nile wasn't conclusive evidence against it.
Public education in America!
I know you're correcting them, I just find that fact hilarious. The Nile is the longest river that is not named Amazon as well, or any other category that doesn't include the Amazon
It is too naive to think decentralization simply can solve any social problems.
Decentralization solves problems created by centralization. It replaces them with the problems created by decentralization. We're fairly certain now that centralization creates social problems. Decentralization eliminates big dictators in favor of petty dictators.
I would like to partner up with you on this.
Reference: https://russell.ballestrini.net/all-local-heros-need-a-gig-s...
Next, expecting the stores to bear the brunt of the store power also brings into question the technical knowledge of the store management. You'd need dedicated personnel for this since most people wouldn't know any of this. And granted, people who have the relevant knowledge to host and maintain the instance wouldn't be working in a store most likely anyway.
All that being said I don't want to complain too much. I like the idea but as it has been submitted there are a lot of practical holes in it considering the "market" it would best serve (areas not already touched by long ecommerce giant fingers) not having the necessary knowledge and infrastructure. Personally I'd suggest taking a look at how other popular decentralized systems work and seeing how ecommerce would fit into that (mainly, Mastodon).
(Disclaimer: I'm not advocating things like the double Irish w/dutch sandwich, or similar methods — while more or less legal — I personally agree of course how morally questionable tax-tricks can be to society, this is just to make sure we're clear that technically, most companies are a for profit and profit-maximizing operation)
This is more like competing with instacart or similar. That's a reasonable market, but operationally is a very hard nut to crack. I don't think having volunteers on bikes is going to manage it.
Perhaps you're thinking of social inventions like the social security nets in western Europe - I'm not as good in their history.
I'm mobile and don't have the stats in front of me but I do know that the network has been used by more than 55k people since last November when the 2.0 version launched.
It's now built on IPFS so nodes are still accessible even when the store is offline.
OpenBazaar.com launched as a read-only way to browse the network.
A mobile version is nearing completion now.
Check out OpenBazaar.org and download the new version, we're proud of how far it has come.
https://www.seattlepi.com/business/tech/article/Amazon-paid-...
> The application is decentralized so we just need money for the developers, the lawyers and the advertisers, we don’t have to build and maintain a huge and expansive network infrastructure. So we’ll just earn money from advertisement, but it will not be specific for you, because we want your data to be yours, and we will accept to advertise only local products.
Just need money for developers, lawyers, and advertisers huh? Just earn money from advertisement!
A utopian marketplace that runs on ad revenue makes little sense to me. I would've liked to see the "decentralized system" part replaced with a boring "centralized system", and the boring "advertising revenue" replaced with something else.
Someone will have to run centralized node for city, so we don’t have to build and maintain a huge and expansive network infrastructure goes out of the window also, bitcoin miners are not running nodes for free and not for advertising money from their servers. How would they make sure that ad revenue for running server is higher than cost of running server?
It is also oblivious to fact that amazon has full fleet for delivery, warehouses. Where they propose everything commision-free but then magically the money for the delivery goes directly to the cyclists involved. An algorithm calculates the best and cheapest route to deliver your goods., I also expect that running bike delivery service is much more complicated that calculating best and cheapest routes.
So I went full rage mode on this one, it is ignorant, visionary, buzzword ridden, writeup. But maybe I should judge it as just fiction writing not actual business idea.
I don't know if advertising is the culprit for the bad aspects of the internet, but I agree that creators/companies don't put any effort into alternative revenue streams. Not only that, but consumers have been trained to expect free content at the expense of ads. Yes, consumers are becoming more and more aware of the privacy-for-service trade they've implicitly agreed to. But I think it'll take years (if not decades) to reverse the "free content/service" mentality but also to have any other revenue stream rival "slapping on ads and calling it a day".
Subscriptions aren't the solution either, with more and more people experience subscription fatigue.
Maybe there isn't some Ultimate Monetization Method™ for internet services and content, but at the very least I'd like to see less defaulting to advertising.
I really do love it and admire it. Often, if people starting a new project really thought through the entire tree of what they were getting into and what all the obstacles were, they might not get started - they might not have time to get started. They can figure it out later; the project will change quite a bit anyway between now and then; just get moving.
So how much time/money are you going to spend on it, or is it nice project but you also don't feel like spending your money on it.
But yes, you're right, the income is absolutely centralized.
Why not just charge a "Nile Fee" to keep the network running on top of each sale? Sure you pay a premium but you know you're contributing back to a supposedly fair network. If this got to the scale of Amazon, it seems like the fees from that volume (especially if fees scaled as a percentage of order size) could more than cover costs.
The gist was that just, used like this, often implies that the speaker not only knows how to accomplish the solution, but can't be bothered to do it themselves. At the same time, they don't see the difficulties in the problem, so won't value a good solution if one is made.
I thought it was a keen observation, and have since tried to think again before using "just".
Ignoring that, the services you're talking about don't even do any kind of canonicalization or grouping of products like Amazon, so if you search for "Xbox" you're going to have to click through many pages of individual listings rather than having a unified product page displaying product details and specs from the manufacturer, consumer reviews, related product variants (e.g. color), etc.
It's fine if you think the idea's weak but at least give the idea a fair shake before dismissing it.
Truth is, Python or Node or Go doesn't matter. Your customer won't care if it takes some input and output something they expected. Technology is cheap.
Whether you can sell your startups or not, is a completely different matter
Direct is when buyers completely trust vendors. There's no escrow and no safety net at all.
Moderated is when both parties agree to a third party moderator and the funds go into a two of three multisig account. Two parties need to agree to release the funds. Normally it's the buyer and seller but if they can't agree then they open a dispute with the moderator, who resolves the dispute and sends the funds to rhe winning party (or slipts them).
Moderators get a small percentage payout when disputes are settled. It's an open marketplace for offering moderator services.
The moderator doesn't have complete control of the funds (two parties are needed) and they aren't even aware of the transaction until a dispute was opened, so it has some advantages over traditional centralized escrow services.
To my mind, email is a 100% decentralized system that we have today. This, to my mind, suggests that we fully capable of designing, implementing, and widely deploying distributed systems. Can you help me understand where I have erred in this logic?
If a decentralized solution is not easy to pick up, and does not offer clear everyday benefits to users over existing centralized solutions, then it will not win with users. (Just "better privacy" is not really a good everyday benefit for the average person; compare DDG usage to Google.)
In a little school district in Texas, we can't use the word "adaptation" in our cellular biology section.
Recent history textbooks use strange language around black slaves that seems to imply they were "workers," rather than, you know, slaves.
Eh. I'll stop. I gave up on teaching ages ago, but my mom still gets drummed up in front of the principal at least monthly for some bullshit. Most recently because the students have a shared box of basic supplies at their little desk pods (scissors and markers), and some mom demanded her son be allowed to use his own supplies because she didn't want him using the "Communist supplies." Verbatim quote. She thought it would teach him the values of communism. Obviously my mom told her to fuck off in no uncertain terms, so stern meeting with the principal for July...
Written by Satan. Not, like, "that book has satanic values" or "was written by a satanist" or "has evil themes," it was literally written by satan.
It's no wonder I was such a shithead little anarcho-atheist growing up.
But yea usually interactions with parents are a nightmare. It's become even worse now that special needs children are lumped into regular classes, so special needs parents will be asking questions my teacher family is literally untrained to handle.
Bitcoin does not have 0 use cases, it has ~1 that's extremely rare in practice, so much so that it's usually not worth using bitcoin. But it does have a usecase. Something something spherical cows.
It is until it isn't.
- Got screwed by a vendor and want to issue a chargeback? Nope. Can't do it.
- Sent to the wrong address because of a typo? Sorry for your loss!
- Got your wallet emptied by a malicious program running on your computer? Sorry for your loss.
- Too many people using the crypto, resulting in confirmations taking forever and/or costing a ton? Too bad, so sad!
- Fiat price of crypto swung widly before / after transaction resulting in your purchase costing far more / less than expected? Should have hodl'd buster!
- Want to convert all that BTC into fifthly dirty fiat? Better find an exchange that actually pays out in USD and not tether. Also better hope that said exchange actually has the money and isn't insolvent.
etc...
It's worthless to everyone except a drowning man, to whom it's priceless.
Supply and demand are highly dependent on context. A strong technology base in a business is usually only required after you're starting to see scaling problems.
“Canadian start-up sells bottled air to China, says sales booming”
https://www-m.cnn.com/2015/12/15/asia/china-canadian-company...
Marketing will take care of that. Half-kidding.
This is easily one of my favorite parts about Bitcoin. Scan the address and you are done.
Once you convert Fiat to crypto, its easier to spend than using a debit/credit card.
Getting it from Fiat to crypto is the hard part. After that you literally scan a QR code or type in an email.
Its my preferred way of paying because I always have my phone but I dont always keep my wallet in my pocket. I dont need to add my address and birth date. I just send money.
Also, to clarify, I'm not a fan of alt coins(at the moment) only Bitcoin I believe is useful. Between coinbase Email, Shift card, and the usual on-chain txns, Ive basically made the change to Bitcoin lifestyle.
The vast majority of people would find it burdensome to convert their money to another currency, and then use that on a normal basis. Of course if you ignore the hardest part, it's "easy".
There are so many options at this point that I never get why anyone makes this about crypto currency. Most of these options are older and more widespread than Bitcoin as well.
If you choose to keep going down the rabbit hole, please learn first about how email works.
Email is centralized in the exact same way Facebook, Twitter, or Netflix are centralized--probably more so. There is less CDN, etc. infrastructure built for email unless you are one of the really big players.
There isn't a large infrastructure set up for email because it's so damn efficient that a 1990s era computer can serve as an email server for thousands of people.
Every organization can host its own email programs: servers, clients, spam filters, etc. Most businesses and companies still host their own email.
Do you have a source for this? Most companies I know of offload mail hosting to gsuite or Microsoft.
Cryptocurrency means it can be completely peer to peer and not reliant on any payment processing platforms, and with multisig is allows for powerful escrow as well.
I understand the "benefits" of cryptocurrency. They're all outweighed by people wanting their money to have a stable value so they can realistically budget their real life expenses. In the bubble cryptocurrency nuts live in where they don't have to worry about real world problems like carefully budgeting their paychecks, it might work, but software like OpenBazaar crashes right into reality.
On what basis do you make that accusation? And how does supporting cryptocurrency preclude them from solving "real problems", whatever that means?
Why is it the "wrong" solution to making a decentralized marketplace? What's the "right" solution?
People did. I remember reading those kinds of comments.
It's likely that the most interesting things in cryptocurrency will be introduced during the crypto-recession. Right now there is too much noise.
And how is this a decentralized marketplace?
Why take the risk, when we can handle it ourselves?
How do credit/debit cards satisfy the proposition of a decentralized marketplace?
They're something that most people are actually using, allowing the marketplace to actually conduct commerce and exist.
And again, how do credit/debit cards—which are centralized systems—satisfy the proposition of a decentralized market?
Clearly not for the people using it right now.
What benefit does this actually give me in my everyday life where I don’t need to buy toilet paper anonymously?
Are you asking why someone would want to transact anonymously?
"And again, how do credit/debit cards—which are centralized systems—satisfy the proposition of a decentralized market?"
They allow the market to actually exist, by using something that the people are actually using.
But a decentralized market does exist with cryptocurrencies.
And credit/debit cards aren’t decentralized.
Doesn't matter. That's what the majority of people are using; so if you want the marketplace to actually be able to serve people, and get them to actually buy stuff, you need to support them.
Not if you actually want your marketplace to be able to, you know, sell stuff to people.