A universal bitcoin merchant directory is needed.... (i.e. "YP" for Bitcoins)

[kmarinas86]

A universal bitcoin merchant directory is needed....


....And it needs to be built into the next version of the BitCoin protocol.


There are many good reasons for this:

Improve the bitcoin economy - Greater participation of BitCoin as a medium of exchange will ultimately determine how high its store of value will rise.

Up-to-date knowledge on the size of the bitcoin economy - It is very important to know which merchants accept BitCoin as payment. It is also encouraging to know how fast Bitcoin is growing depending on location.

Reduced merchant list dilution - It is very easy to create a new list of merchants that accept BitCoin, so people may get lost in the internet when going through these lists. Many tend to be poorly sorted, non-local, and have very low rates of participation.

The go-to protocol to add AND remove merchants - A merchant who no longer accepts bitcoin for whatever reason should be able to remove themselves from the list. Any merchant should be able to add themselves to the list, and this list should also be transferable to sites which mirror these lists.



How to implement:

Merchants should have at least an address and a name.

Every listed address must have at least one business name.

Business categories have to be sufficiently diverse - as diverse as those found on Yellow Pages.

All additions and removals from the directory are documented blockchain-style.

Mirroring of the directory on websites and apps should be a straightforward task.

[1714909479]

1714909479

[1714909479]

1714909479

[slothbag]

I had suggested something like this "P2P business directory" a few months ago and got zero interest.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=156857.0

[slothbag]

our goal is to reach what you describe above... http://usebitcoins.info

What is needed is a decentralized directory.. centralized is not sustainable in my opinion.

Have you thought about creating an open RPC API to your directory so that other directory sites can submit new businesses and also retrieve new businesses from your directory?

[vatz]

I'm working to this point... it's a matter of time

[ranlo]

our goal is to reach what you describe above... http://usebitcoins.info

What is needed is a decentralized directory.. centralized is not sustainable in my opinion.

Have you thought about creating an open RPC API to your directory so that other directory sites can submit new businesses and also retrieve new businesses from your directory?

If it were decentralized, how would it be moderated to keep scams out?

[blockgenesis]

Yes please, I would love to see this happen and become more serious.

Maybe it would be good to learn from past mistakes. Many attempts have either been abandonned, or filled with advertising or are mostly inactive now. A list of remaining survivors is shown below.

IMO, such projects need a lot of human time to add/update/remove shops constantly. And thus, a team is probably needed to work together on this to do something nice and to prevent one member to stop the whole project if he/she becomes unavailable for any reason.

It might also be good to contact existing other projects to work with them, or to learn from them. And also, to import/review their existing database.

That said, I don't think this project needs to be decentralized by itself. If someone comes with a brilliant P2P system and prooves that it work in practise, than fine. But meanwhile, probably that any usual way to do it can work. The real matter is probably to put long term efforts and time on it I think.

https://www.spendbitcoins.com/places/
http://btcmerchants.com/
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Real_world_shops
http://bitcoinnavigator.com/
http://bitcoin.travel/
https://www.bitcoinlocator.com/home
http://www.bitcoinmap.com/