.

[noob2001]

.

[acarterczyz]

Its possible, as long as it uses escrow. One thing you'd need to keep in mind is hackers are challenging everything we know about security everyday.

[franky1]

ebay decentralised?

ebay control the content of adverts. they can cancel anyones auction if it does not fit their policy
ebays subsiduary can hold onto your funds and mess around with who deserves to get paid at their leisure, you are not in control and have to follow their rules.
you cant really walk around your local town and do an instant ebay auction standing next to someone, you have to do a ebay auction through their site.

and ebay is a corporation and not a community of different and unaffiliated people.

so tell me how is ebay decentralised?

edit..

i guess you meant, is it possible to have a decentralised market that had some of the auction/escrow features of ebay, but without the whole corporate owned and overly controlled payment option

[Baldassare]

Yes, there are many other ideas for decentralized open source projects floating around:

Twitter analogue (twister)
Facebook analogue  (diaspora)
Google analogue (yacy)
Data exchange (bittorent)
Networking (TOR, I2P)
Messaging (TOX, Bitmessage)
DNS(namecoin)
hosting
moneys (dogecoin)

[practicaldreamer]

So I'm trying to think of other areas which could become decentralised........

I dunno - but I'm interested in the answers also.

Ebay might be able to become decentralised I suppose - but it aint so bad as it is, is it ? Its the Paypal fees that are the bugger for me  [and BTC will sort that]

Facebook/Twitter etc  - I don't use them personally and so don't care one way or the other.

I'm interested in Bitmessage and not having my emails/messages open to surveillance/tracking though.

Can anyone here explain - and this isn't completely off topic - the practical benefits of, say, ethereum to the average Jo ? Just a simple example - so that a child could understand it  (for me)