Openbazaar needs your support

[bbc.reporter]

After 6 years, it appears that this implies that the cryptospace does not need a decentralized marketplace. There were also people in the community that described Openbazaar as something similar to a webbrowser for a very small segment of users. Thy are slowly proven to be correct.

It needs your support.


Over the past several months, we have been relying on OpenBazaar’s donation funds to support these infrastructure costs, but those funds will be depleted shortly. At OB1, we have desperately tried to secure more funding to not only maintain OpenBazaar’s support costs, but execute the next phase of the protocol that we believe can unlock explosive user adoption. Sadly, we have been unsuccessful and have no choice but to discontinue these supporting services.
We would like to apologize for the short notice, which is the result of last minute funding plans falling-through. We will do everything in our power to try and extend the window so that users can safely withdraw their funds from their OpenBazaar and Haven wallets.

If you have been positively impacted by OpenBazaar or you believe in the mission & vision of a global decentralized marketplace, we need your financial support today. Please consider donating at the following addresses:
BTC: 3JuykfZRbCepzkVLLseSaiufDJ5AC8ae8R
LTC: MTTEVR5pdAHJNmmFNzVjaQhGB9qLkHLk7m
ZEC: t1UEN9mf9hMccwTznqBoJFh2FERgyuMJ2oA
BCH: qq9favzja34zywrp222cwrx4fny9fe64pyaxl5dvar
ETH: 0x71A6e8B0580104dacA0633a9BA6F90181C6F40a5

Read in full https://medium.com/@therealopenbazaar/openbazaar-needs-your-support-75fe7e117ad1

[Yogee]

In those six years, how many potential users did they reach? Other than Bitcointalk, I don't see them in any forums or social media. Perhaps marketing is one major issue? They can build it with the most advance features and make it easy to use even for kids and grandmas but if only a few people know about them, I doubt they'll survive.

At OB1, we have desperately tried to secure more funding to not only maintain OpenBazaar’s support costs, but execute the next phase of the protocol that we believe can unlock explosive user adoption.

What actually prevented them from building this in the first place? They sounded like other hype projects full of promises to be honest.

......
What's happening to Openbazaar is almost the same to what's happening to decentralized exchanges. If not for Uniswap, we would still hear the same issue of no one else is using them.

[mk4]

OpenBazaar made a nice attempt. Buy after a few years of peripherally watching their platform, it doesn't seem like they moved that much forward unfortunately; and quite surprisingly too since I don't think they even have a close competitor.

Imo it seems like their time is cut short unfortunately, but I applaud them for their attempt.

[TGD]

The idea is great but the only problem was the team failed to attract user on there platform that result to lack of items available on there marketplace. Additionally, Huge online merchant is now accepting cryptocurrency which gives this project a big hurdle to become a first mover on cryptocurrency online commerce.

I hope that open bazaar offers a token of appreciation for those people who will donate on this project so that they can encourage more to danate.

[Darker45]

This is sad news but it is what it is. Openbazaar must have fallen short of something for failing to reach the level of adoption they set as goal. It may be that they are indeed not doing well in promoting their marketplace. Or perhaps people are simply more attracted to larger marketplaces with much more merchants offering a much wider array of products, regardless of their being centralized. Or probably the larger market likes the idea of online shopping without the need to download and install apps. There are just so many possible reasons behind. But the bottom-line is that they failed to capture their target market.

They need to do some "what went right, what went wrong" sessions if they wish to move forward and are able to gather the necessary amount. They cannot just count on "community support" alone because the community has preferences and taste and likes and dislikes and all. Even if they are able to gather sufficient funds out of donations to continue operating, without significant changes or improvement, this thing will eventually happen again in the future.

[Lorence.xD]

The idea is great but the only problem was the team failed to attract user on there platform that result to lack of items available on there marketplace. Additionally, Huge online merchant is now accepting cryptocurrency which gives this project a big hurdle to become a first mover on cryptocurrency online commerce.

I hope that open bazaar offers a token of appreciation for those people who will donate on this project so that they can encourage more to danate.

The other reason might be that they are not making a solution, if you stroll in Tor browser, markets like this exist although not organized it works the same. If they make it public, they will be stomped by pioneer markets like Amazon, Alibaba or eBay. The idea was good but they have a strong competition and I think that is one of the factors aside from no traction when it comes to advertisement.

[hatshepsut93]

BCH: qq9favzja34zywrp222cwrx4fny9fe64pyaxl5dvar

I'll never donate to anyone who lists bcash or bsv, they are just legitimizing these scamcoins that want to destroy Bitcoin.

But even if they didn't, I still wouldn't donate to OpenBazaar, I don't see how can they turn things around, at best it would just allow them to operate a tiny bit more. Their model isn't working, or maybe people just don't view Bitcoin as money right now, and until this changes, we won't see any boom in Bitcoin-based commerce.

[seoincorporation]

If Openbazaar needs support it's because they did a bad business engine. They should change a nice fee for each sale, that fee would help to make the networks and the infrastructure grow all the way.

Another good option could be to make a token just to capitalize on the project. Looks like that option works nice for legit services.

[bbc.reporter]

OpenBazaar made a nice attempt. Buy after a few years of peripherally watching their platform, it doesn't seem like they moved that much forward unfortunately; and quite surprisingly too since I don't think they even have a close competitor.

Imo it seems like their time is cut short unfortunately, but I applaud them for their attempt.

They certainly deserve the applause. However, would you give them support by donating to their address or do you reckon they should stop and accept defeat?

[mk4]

They certainly deserve the applause. However, would you give them support by donating to their address or do you reckon they should stop and accept defeat?

I personally wouldn't because I'd rather allocate my donations to better causes, though I wouldn't suggest against donating to them because they're trying to create something that could potentially be decent; though unfortunately I'm not seeing good signs concerning the likeliness of their success.

Ultimately, I think they should keep trying, but they definitely need to step up their game tenfold if they want to survive.

[boyptc]

They lack marketing and PR. Looking at their website, they seem to be upgrading and migrating to another business. Why they don't post it on their main website?

Is this service below going to close too as it's also their mobile app?

--> https://gethaven.app/

[pooya87]

After 6 years, it appears that this implies that the cryptospace does not need a decentralized marketplace.

i disagree. there is a dire need for decentralized marketplace the same way there is for decentralized exchanges. and they both suffer from the same issues, people want easy to use, already tested and working solutions. they are too lazy to make any efforts, contribute,... they just want the end result.
you can always see how someone is complaining about how they got ripped off by some centralized service but when you give them the alternative solution they are too lazy to use it.

i haven't followed OpenBazaar project closely but i think they first have to explain what they did with the $5 million they raised 2 years ago and i believe they even ran an ICO and sold useless tokens. that's ignoring the donations they may have received.
so where did all that money go to?

[logfiles]

Despite being decentralized and decentralization being what everyone buzzes about in this crypto world, the unpopularity of Openbazaar reminds of that bisq, the only real decentralized, open source peer to peer crypto exchange I know about. Now one would expect people to make a beeline for such services but to my surprise, people instead decide to ignore them and instead go for centralized exchanges and marketplaces.

Something is definitely wrong. Maybe being decentralized, nobody cares to advertise them like you would see with centralized platforms. People get to know about platforms like Openbazaar when they are deeply engaged in forums like this one but aside from that on the outside world even when just browsing different webpages. Chances of knowing about them is way so low

[theskillzdatklls]

Despite being decentralized and decentralization being what everyone buzzes about in this crypto world, the unpopularity of Openbazaar reminds of that bisq, the only real decentralized, open source peer to peer crypto exchange I know about. Now one would expect people to make a beeline for such services but to my surprise, people instead decide to ignore them and instead go for centralized exchanges and marketplaces.

Something is definitely wrong. Maybe being decentralized, nobody cares to advertise them like you would see with centralized platforms. People get to know about platforms like Openbazaar when they are deeply engaged in forums like this one but aside from that on the outside world even when just browsing different webpages. Chances of knowing about them is way so low

People seem to value convenience, customer support and all that much more than decentralized things as I've seen being in crypto going on a better part of a decade now. In principle, I love all open-sourced projects including OpenBazaar.

I'll get MintDice to sponsor you guys a free blog article, explaining your project and asking for support over there. I value what you guys are trying to do, I hope it works out in the long run, even if society doesn't realize it yet.

[leea-1334]

I thought all these defi apps are showing that DEXs ARE much needed and very popular? I know Uniswap and all those are not exactly decentralized but that is anyway how most DEXs are limited in architecture, that there are nothing but non-custodial platforms.

Hard to support with money,,, you just have to work on making it easier for people to use that is all. And marketing?

[Wind_FURY]

They lack marketing and PR. Looking at their website, they seem to be upgrading and migrating to another business. Why they don't post it on their main website?

Is this service below going to close too as it's also their mobile app?

--> https://gethaven.app/

I believe more PR, and marketing won't help them. Simply, a decentralized/censorship-resistant, peer to peer marketplace for LEGAL items can't compete with its centralized, but more efficient counterparts.

Develop a censorship-resistant, anonymous dark market, it will have a higher probabilty for success.

[NotATether]

And what happens to the people who can't shop on centralized marketplaces because they don't have bank accounts or credit cards? They'll be thrown under the bus. It's not like everyone who owns bitcoin and shops on a decentralized store also owns necessary banking assets for centralized shopping.

Personally I'm sad to hear Openbazaar is having financing troubles, but since the program is open-source, even if it shuts down, someone with enough money can launch it again.

If I were them I would pause upgrading infrastructure and run an affiliate program to bring more customers to them. And make the program anonymous without asking for personal details so you retain the maximum number of affiliates who want to advertise Openbazaar for them. So that there's no need for Openbazaar to do and pay for the advertising themselves.

[gentlemand]

Idealism - meet reality.

I've probably downloaded it 4-5 times and gave up in disgust a short while later each time. Not even having a viable form of searching is just bizarre, or perhaps all of the sellers fell away.

Most people don't want to spend BTC. Those who do want to be able to actually find what they want to buy. If I remember rightly for the few items I found many had prices that clearly hadn't been updated since forever, or perhaps they were just very expensive.

If it fails it fails. Just like Bitcoin itself, if you become a charity case then you have no future.

As above, the only real future is dark market stuff for now at least.

[Jating]

I think it's been on the lifeline for two years now, and this year we have witnessed it's call for help. True we need this kind of 'decentralised' store, but the truth it, nobody is actually using it. They are even comparable to to DEX today, as much as we have been calling traders to used it, actually only minority are into it, hence low liquidity, as compare to let's say CEX like Binance.

I know it's sad to hear that they might be closing in the future if no external help comes in. But it is what it is and I doubt that they will got the needed donation to continue with their platform. Again, this is evident two years ago, but for now it is not viable. And one factor is that it is there are a lot of limitations, and that makes crypto users stay away from their services.

[Taskford]

The idea is great but the only problem was the team failed to attract user on there platform that result to lack of items available on there marketplace. Additionally, Huge online merchant is now accepting cryptocurrency which gives this project a big hurdle to become a first mover on cryptocurrency online commerce.

I hope that open bazaar offers a token of appreciation for those people who will donate on this project so that they can encourage more to danate.

The other reason might be that they are not making a solution, if you stroll in Tor browser, markets like this exist although not organized it works the same. If they make it public, they will be stomped by pioneer markets like Amazon, Alibaba or eBay. The idea was good but they have a strong competition and I think that is one of the factors aside from no traction when it comes to advertisement.

I don't see them doing a marketing campaign here or in outside so far and maybe this is the reason why they didn't been notice much by new people who's seeking the same service as they offer, maybe they should pause for a while and think about better strategy since if they accept this defeat for sure it will be a huge loss for them.