Hello there! Welcome to our digital castle.

Artwork credit - @yeszuzia on steemit and instagram

Another week goes by.. And we've had some interesting developments behind the scenes.
In light of such.. This challenge is going to be new and different.

So.. To add a lil context.. We have a discord channel with approaching 100 people on it and it's decently active at times and lively on there.. And we have a number of people who just sort of hang out and chat or who use the post promotion channel who don't really play in the contest which I don't think is bad at all, I think it's good to have a vibrant community even if they aren't playing in the game.. So I wanted to try to reach out and appeal to more people and bring them into our community even if they don't want to be a part of the IFC game.

With the help of a few others like @davemccoy @har5h and @plushzilla we've started a framework for an idea called "The Marketplace".

It'll be both a channel on our discord server and the #informationfinding tag where you'll be able to sell any item you have sort of like Ebay or offer any service sort of like Fiver or Upwork.

It's all P2P and we don't try to take any of the profit or get involved in the deals at all, we just provide a community and a tag for you to do that yourselves.

The only rule right now is no illegal or malicious content. We will try to prevent that as much as we possibly can.

Also.. I know there are others out there offering similar services, but we're not trying to compete with them or anyone really.. We have our own small yet rapidly growing community and we're just trying to find new ways to expand and improve our world. :)

So the quest for this round will be to offer some kind of service or item to the marketplace.
Whoever offers the best one as voted on by the judges will win and receive an extra spotlight for their work. This doesn't guarantee you will sell your item or your service, but.. It does help get you and your brand more visibility.

This may be really confusing at first! As we are just starting The Marketplace and it's hard to know where to begin... However it's essentially a place where you can offer to sell any kind of item or service for whatever kind of currency you want. Then if someone likes your deal they can message you and you two can set up a deal.

I'm probably going to enter this round as well even though I can't win, just to sort of.. Test out the system and help show others how to do this as well.. I just dunno what I'm going to offer or sell yet!

I have a feeling this will start out slow and clunky, though.. In time it could show itself to be a very popular addition and yet stand alone separate entity to the IFC!

This could be a great way to bridge the gap between a lot of people who may want to be a part of our community, but who may not want to play in the game. Time will tell of course! But I have a feeling in time this could be something extra special. :) Sorta like the "Silk Road" but without illegal or malicious stuff. Just essentially an extra place for people to trade with each other.

AND.. We'll try to work it in with the IFC world as much as possible as well, which is one reason for this quest. But.. We really want to highlight art and services.. So.. Perhaps I'll write up an extra post to help promote the winner as well.

Plus we'd like to do this kind of quest more often in the future, we may even start doing one of these once a week at some point if we can get the right volunteer to help out.. I think it would be a great way to highlight and show thanks to the awesome artists and content creators and workers of various kinds on steemit! :)

A good way to look at doing this quest might be to.. Look around your house and think of something you don't really need or want anymore and then offer to sell it using the #informationfinding tag or coming on the discord channel and using the Marketplace channel, or preferably on both places!

Think of how much you want to charge for your service or the item in either steem or any other currency or you could even offer something for free, or be extra creative and require some kind of condition or riddle to be solved, it's really up to you!

I wanted to do a "show and tell" quest at some point and.. You could think of this sorta like a show and tell, except it's more like a "show and sell". Plus I'd like to repeat that it doesn't have to be a physical item, it can be a service.. Like you could offer to teach people something or you could research something for someone.. Online research is a pretty big industry that can pay a lot of money! Which is essentially what a lot of this whole IFC game is based on is.. Online Research.

Or you could offer to manage someone's social media page or create a website for them, or a logo, or make a song, or do a painting, or make a music video, or.. You know.. It's really up to you as long as it's not illegal or malicious.|

We're still "beta" testing this and it is new so it will probably start out slow and we're not going to advertise it a lot until we sort of get a little bit of experience and a better understanding first. Though.. It is essentially ready for you to use and I would like to start encouraging people to try it out so we can get things more fine tuned and then officially release it to the public even more before too long. :)

Also.. If you're a regular, I suggest rereading the rules this time to be clear. I want to make a split here where the IFC entries will now use an #ifc tag and anything involving the marketplace will use the #informationfinding tag.

You can still use the #informationfinding tag on your IFC entries if you want, but.. The primary tag for the contest is now #ifc and the primary tag for The Marketplace is #informationfinding

Oh and I forgot to mention @har5h chose Kryptocek's Shield as his relic for solving the Hidden Ladder riddle. Good choice in my opinion!

This quest is to add an item or service to the marketplace. Whichever one the judges like the most will win and gain the XP, steem/sbd and have their item/service spotlighted with an extra blog post created by me to help gain more visibility to the winning artist/seller/content creator.

And now a moment for our sponsors!

First up is @ats-david who has helped greatly! If you appreciate this contest or just his efforts in general you may want to look into voting for him as a witness at @ats-witness, he does a lot of other cool things for the community as well!

Next is @timcliff who has similarly helped out the contest significantly and who is also a witness who does a lot for the community, so likewise if you appreciate the efforts you may want to vote for him as witness also!

I'd also like to thank @theguruasia who has pledged at least 20 steem to the second and third place prizes and he said he may even donate more.

And @nxtblg who has been regularly resteeming and upvoting our challenges which has been a big help!

Plus one other person who has been helping a lot who deserves some credit is @soundlegion who has also been upvoting the contests regularly.

And while not technically sponsors, we are working with @davemccoy and those at #newbiegames and #newbieresteemday and they do a great service to the community so definitely check them out if you appreciate that, or if you're new.

Also not a sponsor, though @iexplore has taken a huge workload directly off of my shoulders and is now doing the "catch up" rounds, those should be posted on the @ifc page.. And I suggest giving him a follow and some support as well if you appreciate the work as he is doing an amazingly helpful and important job! Oh and he usually posts the catch up rounds on Sunday the day after I post mine on Saturday.

For this challenge.. If there's a tie.. We will do another round to see who wins.

The winner will be decided by whoever gets the most votes.
The only people who can vote in a qualifying sense are myself and the judges I've selected and we will vote by leaving a comment on the submission that we like the most and say something like.. "I vote for this one" and a reason why we voted would be good too, but is not mandatory.

You have until this challenges post payout ends to submit your post. Though we do accept late entries if you get it in before all the judges vote.

The challenge will finish after 7 days when the post ends and provides its payout cycle and unless there is a tie, the winner will gain the steem, the XP and have a point to go towards their long term win. (minus the 25% for curation)

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Rules

1. Twenty Eighth challenge starts now and is a challenge to provide the best item or service for the marketplace. 2. Create a blog post for the contest. 3. Title must contain, "IFC - S1 : R28 entry" 4. Leave a link to your post in the comments below. (This part is important and a lot of people forget this, please put the blog link in the right place so our judges can find it) 5. And you also have to use the #ifc tag in your blog post as well.
6. If you somehow get hurt doing any of our quests you can not justifiably hold us accountable. Take responsibility for your own choices and actions in life. This is a voluntary game where you choose to play. Only you can make that decision for yourself. 7. You are responsible for paying the appropriate government taxes, fees, and service charges resulting from any transactions through The Marketplace. We are not responsible for collecting, reporting, paying, or remitting to you any such taxes, fees, or service charges, except as may otherwise be required by law.

Acceptable content

1. Any kind of item or service.
   
2. Language is primarily in English and if you would like to participate from elsewhere in the world it is up to you to translate your message into English so we can understand you.
3. We also encourage role playing for those who enjoy doing that. :)

Good luck in the contest!

Artwork credit - @yeszuzia on steemit and instagram

Image modified by @charisma777