
OpenBazaar is Open for Business - griffinmb
https://blog.openbazaar.org/openbazaar-is-open-for-business/
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nvk
Congrats on the launch!

Looking forward to seeing how this social experiment/project plays out.

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jerguismi
Can anybody summarize the benefits? Too lazy to install the software myself.

As I understand, there is an escrow. Is it trustless/multi-sig based? What
about privacy/encryption? Can anybody be an escrow agent?

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adrusi
It's like a darknet market (Silk Road, AlphaBay, etc) that can't be taken down
by law enforcement. Or it's like a clearnet market (Ebay) that doesn't take a
cut and works with bitcoin.

It looks like it uses multisig as a form of escrow [1], but the third party
isn't in any way affiliated with openbazaar, just whoever the vendor and
customer can agree to trust. It looks like users have to find a third party on
their own, out-of-band [2]. I can see this working for small vendors, but I
don't see how it would work with large vendors without the emergence of 1–3
large escrow services, which would diminish some of the benefits of
decentralization.

This kind of multisig-based escrow will never be able to compete with Ebay. On
Ebay, customers don't realize that they're paying Ebay to be a moderator
because it's included in the price tag. On OpenBazaar they will be forced to
pay attention to the escrow fee. I also fear that it will be impossible for
escrow services to develop the necessary level of trust without being forced
on vendors by the marketplace and still compete with the customer-favoring
escrow that Ebay has.

It competes much better with darknet marketplaces, since it eliminates the
possibility of sudden cash-outs or FBI raids on the scales that other markets
have seen. They should accept that that's where they'll be successful and
integrate some kind of anonymizing layer, probably tor, maybe i2p.

[1] [https://blog.openbazaar.org/what-is-
openbazaar/](https://blog.openbazaar.org/what-is-openbazaar/)

[2] [https://openbazaar.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/207548366](https://openbazaar.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/207548366)

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wyck
This is wrong, anyone using openbazaar for darknet reasons will be instantly
caught because openbazaar does not support TOR or annonymity in any form.

The goal of the developers is simply a marketplace client, which seems
misguided.

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adrusi
I'm sure you can use the tor http proxy like you can with nearly everything
else.

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smellf
Replying here because the stupid max comment depth was reached on your deeper
comment. You said:

> I guess they might use [UDP] for DHT control messages

And IIRC that's exactly what they use UDP for.

The subreddit had a lot of good info last I checked (a few months).

[https://www.reddit.com/r/openbazaar](https://www.reddit.com/r/openbazaar)

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cmrx64
> Replying here because the stupid max comment depth was reached on your
> deeper comment

Note that there is _no_ "max comment depth" on HN, and I don't know where this
thought keeps coming from. There are a few reasons the "reply" link may not be
shown:

\- The comment was posted too recently, and you need to wait for the cooldown
to expire. This _is_ proportional to comment depth. It's said this is a
flamewar prevention mechanism.

\- The comment is too old.

~~~
smellf
Ah, ok. A quick google didn't show me why there was no reply link so I just
assumed it was a depth thing. Thanks for the info.

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fru2013
Cached mirror:

[https://archive.is/yOB5L](https://archive.is/yOB5L)

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snowpanda
Thanks, the original link timed out for me.

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Shenxi
Looks interesting. Is it essential to their goals that it be a separate app? I
wonder why it's not just a website.

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SuddsMcDuff
But then it wouldn't be decentralized

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55555
Extremely impressive UI. Great work team!

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it_learnses
how does openbazaar make money? How will the investors recover money and make
profit?

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skrowl
I couldn't find this answer either. It's difficult to trust someone with large
hosting / development / etc costs but no business model. It's not a charity.
How do they "keep the lights on" with no fees?

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pmorici
Why would they have large hosting costs? They don't do anything except have a
website where you can download the OpenBazaar software individual stores are
self hosted.

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latj
Looks interesting. Are my only options to use root password or compile it
myself?

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le0n
Panama papers -- <anger> OpenBazaar -- cool!

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greenrd
AFAIK decentralised Bitcoin transactions are already illegal in the US if none
of the parties to the transaction have a money transmitter license - correct
me if I'm wrong.

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paavokoya
You're COMPLETELY wrong... like extremely wrong. Bitcoin transactions between
peers have always been legal.

Conversion of USD - Bitcoin over something like $5000/year needs a MSL

