Please let me know when we can safely and securely buy weed on there. I could use some.
SilkRoad does that pretty well actually.
From what I have heard there are actually a lot of scams on SR2 (and were on SR1 after the march 2013 bubble). I would assume there be a lot of scams on this "marketplace" as well
As much as on Ebay. Open Bazaar will attempt to use cryptographic tools to lower the risks but no marketplace can claim to be scammer free, even physical ones.
Correct ebay scams can work in various ways and also as a seller you have ebay itself scamming you by putting everything on the seller if a buyer is unhappy for whatever reason. I'd think twice before selling a high priced item on ebay these days.
Ebay has a set of policies that both the buyer and the seller know in advance of entering into a transaction. They both should know how something will turn out based on the facts of a specific case and the documentation each of them has compiled.
With openBazer, every escrow will be somewhat different. If you were to present one set of facts to three people who act as escrow you would probably get three different results. None of them would likely be able to justify their results with a written policy or procedure that both the buyer and seller was aware of prior to using his services.
This essentially makes it easy to try to scam as someone could simply make a bunch of shell accounts, use an escrow that they know will act in their favor and carry out the scam many times.Unless it requires both party to agree on an escrow and/or add randomization to the escrow selection process. It should be enough to make it impossible for someone to scam that way with a systemic approach.
The scammer could recommend the escrow they know will rule in their favor, and unless the other party has a reason to think the escrow is less then legit they likely would not decline the transaction. If escrow selection is randomized then users would have great difficulty not using a scamming escrow that will eventually make it into the rotation
It is possible but it will be a very inefficient way of scamming. Don’t forget that escrows will also have a reputation system. Would you deal with someone having a bad reputation that is proposing you an escrow that also have a bad reputation or no reputation at all?
It would be possible that escrow may not be outright scamming but just ruling in favor of the scammer given a certain set of facts (if for example there was not clear evidence either way, and does not truly know who is telling the truth)
I think the risks for these situations are kind of low but very present. That's also why I'm very curious to see how the escrow reputation system will work and if/how what you described will addressed.
