OpenBazaar 2.0 Beta

https://www.openbazaar.org/
I love the idea of a decentralized marketplace. No fees. Built in escrow using multisig. This is what OpenBazaar aims to do with this release of Openbazaar 2.0 . Openbazaar is not new they have been working on this for some time. The new software is not without its issues. It is still beta but considered stable enough to use. This weekend I went through installation and gave it a whirl. This is what I found.

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One good thing is they have the ability to run the market over Tor. They have made this process fairly easy but certainly not noob friendly yet. I was able to set up OpenBazaar over Tor in about 10 min having knowledge of Tor already. Being decentralized they have zero control over what is added for sale. For good or bad, adding Tor while great for anonymity also encourages Darknet type sales. While I have not seen blatant gun sales drugs are being posted often. This is what a free market looks like. I don't have an issue with this personally. But I wonder what long term effect it will have on OB.

The software itself is nothing fancy. You can search by keywords. Follow other sellers. Look at their store page, and buy something if you dare. Even OB warns you to only do small sales at this point don't risk large amounts of BTC.

One thing to be aware of is how this market works. This is my understanding. If you buy a widget from Bob and pay via his store page, you must first transfer BTC to the OB system. This will show up in your wallet. Once you hit purchase one of two things happen. If the seller has no moderator the funds are put into a multisig wallet that requires both the buyer and the seller to sign in order for the funds to get released. If you receive your product and are happy you can release the funds to the seller. If you're unhappy you have to work with the seller to resolve. If the seller has a moderator and there is a dispute that cannot be settled the funds will have been put into a multisig wallet that requires 2 of 3 signatures. The buyer, seller or moderator. This allows for a trusted third party moderator to step in and settle disputes if the 2 parties cannot agree. It's not a bad system. But it needs more work. I saw no obvious way to tell if a vendor had a moderator.

As a seller the software is a bit frustrating. Posting new listings is easy and fast with pictures, shipping options, inventory tracking, and coupons settings. However, the network often fails to publish your updates. This simply requires a bit of patience. One thing I noticed is even after a successful update where I changed the picture on an item for sale and deleted the old one, it updated the picture within the listing but still shows the old picture as the main picture when people are searching. The network struggles under Tor to display large amounts of data such as listing someone's 500 followers. Messaging is buggy as all get out. I get reply notifications and often they do not show in my chat. This can be very frustrating for both the buyer and seller.

Be wary. Sellers without moderators can tech wait you out 45 days where the funds default to the seller. Easy money for anyone wanting to pull an exit scam. Never send to a seller to an address they give you! Use the OB system. Ask the seller if they have a moderator.

OpenBazaar has a similar feel to steemit as far as aesthetics go. You can add a banner image and profile pic and pretty much everything else is white and black.

It is a good start and a long time coming. I hope to see more fixes and enhancements soon.

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