Grand Opening of The Marketplace.

Welcome to the Grand Opening of The Marketplace! :D

Artwork credit - @yeszuzia on steemit and instagram

What's "The Marketplace"? The Marketplace is a place to buy and sell and network and is an extension of our virtual IFC world, BUT.. It is also a completely stand alone service, so you don't need to be a part of the IFC to enjoy it. :)

You can sell anything you want for whichever kind of currency you'd like as long as nothing is illegal or malicious. It's P2P and between the users themselves, we don't try to take any of the profit or get involved in the deals, unless there's something illegal or malicious then we'll try to do whatever we reasonably can to discourage such.

Think Ebay meets Fiver meets Upwork, OR.. You could think The Silk Road, without illegal/malicious stuff.

I know there are people out there doing similar things and we're not copying them or trying to compete with them. We're just trying to build our own virtual world more, and when I was thinking of what kinds of things are typically found in a castle, a marketplace is one of the first and most important things I thought of.

Plus, we already have so many great artists and professionals of various kinds playing in our IFC contest.. That it just seems like a perfect extension to help give them another avenue or method of expressing themselves or selling their work if we can.

Surprisingly to me we already have 12 shops within a couple days of offering them, and quite a few offers in the buy-sell room on our discord or via the #informationfinding tag and a few successful deals within the last week or so since we opened The Marketplace to our members.

We even had physical properties in Florida listed for rent by one of our merchants in The Marketplace! And they had someone showing interest in possibly using their service in the future! That blows my mind.

This is sorta like an RPG shop, but it's blurred into the real world and people can help empower/enrich each other by offering services to each other.. I think it's a fascinating idea.. I'm curious to see where it goes!

We're just getting started, and already.. The interest shown and positive feedback we've received has been pretty epic in my opinion. I thought it would start out a lot slower admittedly.. And now I even more think in time this could be a pretty popular community someday, especially if it grows like the IFC has! :)

We also have a reputation system in the works, where you get digicrystals for every successful deal and a red flag if you break the rules.

So far the digicrystals are just to show that you're a more trusted buyer/seller, but in the future they may mean more and we will probably find additional ways to make them mean more, perhaps bonus rewards or something. Not sure yet.

As I mentioned earlier we already have 12 shops up or under construction, so we're ready to open this up to the public. :) Feel free to come on in and look around! Maybe you'll find something you'd like. We could use some more buyers to help support the sellers! Or.. Maybe you want to sell an item or service yourself? Or perhaps even open up your own shop?

So far based on my memory and I may be forgetting some we have people teaching different languages, we have drawers who will draw up pictures for you and we have music and poetry and research and essay writing and help with cryptos and card reading and upvote/comment services and properties up for rent! And a new unopened Magic The Gathering card game and a sort of travel agency type of thing where one of our members volunteers to help with traveling and we have a list maker who will make all kinds of lists for you and we have crystals and stones shop and an IFC merch shop in the works as well! Like.. I'm amazed at how many different things we have going on and we just got started!

If you want to use our tag to buy or sell it's at #informationfinding
And there's more on our discord channel as well, we have numerous rooms set up and you can have your own shop set up in there. Right now anyone can set up shop, though in the future we may require a certain amount of reputation/transactions first or something.

Oh and I wanted to remind people that they can put out requests with the #informationfinding tag as well, it's not just buying/selling.. You can also ask for something and see if anyone might be able to help.

Oh and.. We have close to 100 people on our discord now. @kryptocek offered to pay 1 steem to the 100th member and I was thinking we should do something like that as well so I'm going to match his 1 steem and I'll go further and try to resteem/upvote and leave a thoughtful comment on the 100th individuals blog.

Speaking of such.. For anyone who would like to be a part of this.. Here's the link to our discord channel if you would like to stop by and check it out! :) There's a chat room to ask questions on the left and also you can find The Marketplace there and the shops for the members.

https://discord.gg/bKVnKQF

Alrighty.. I think that's enough for now.. Please feel free to ask any questions if you have any and myself or someone else will do their best to help! :) Hope you find something that suits you in The Marketplace!

Special thanks to @har5h @plushzilla and @davemccoy for helping to inspire, create and turn this idea into a reality.