Openbazaar needs your support

[7788bitcoin]

I hope that they will survive this crisis and the community will help them. I haven't used Openbazaar myself, but I've heard a lot about them.

I feel that they will survive the crisis and the donations start pouring in and some anonymous donor has agreed to cover their cost till the end of this year as per their social media profile and i hope they can find more donors to cover everything. Personally i never used them but i will download them and have a look at it. We need these markets to survive to have a fair market situation.

[pixie85]

I will not support them because I haven't used them at all.

Every time someone was talking about  it on the forum I kept opening their site but there really wans't anything that I liked or thought to be priced so competitively that I'd consider buying it.

I wish them all the best because no crypto business should go bankrupt, but if that is the market's judgement, so be it.

[cryptomaniac_xxx]

I hope that they will survive this crisis and the community will help them. I haven't used Openbazaar myself, but I've heard a lot about them.

I feel that they will survive the crisis and the donations start pouring in and some anonymous donor has agreed to cover their cost till the end of this year as per their social media profile and i hope they can find more donors to cover everything. Personally i never used them but i will download them and have a look at it. We need these markets to survive to have a fair market situation.

Right as per their tweet:



https://twitter.com/openbazaar/status/1310252576848437248

And this,



https://twitter.com/openbazaar/status/1310743888341200896

So this is good news already, yes I myself haven't used it all, but in our own little way, let's support this decentralised market.

[Wind_FURY]

People WILL USE Bitcoins if it is completely necessary.

Of course but they will do their very best to resist and find alternatives to use until the completely necessary moment arrives. That doesn't make for a very vibrant user base. And it also chucks most discretionary purchases out the window. You will simply go without.

Because of opportunity cost.

BUT, if you're a heroine user, who wants to purchase heroine from the dark markets, OR a battered wife, who wants to "hire someone", the most efficient way to do it is through Bitcoin.

The point is about finding efficiency. The bank won't serve the dark markets, then Bitcoin will make that market more efficient.

[mariah.sadio]

Sad to know but a lot of people here only for trading & speculations, they are not ready to support important projects

[Wind_FURY]

Sad to know but a lot of people here only for trading & speculations, they are not ready to support important projects

Like what OP posted, "it's similar to a browser with only a small segment of interested users". It's not because we didn't care, it's because Openbazaar wasn't solving an inefficiency.

[3meek]

Sesen this project launched before 2016 and I think I still have it installed in my laptop. It wasn't updated since, I can't find people nearby using the project as well. They do have a competitor like the Bitbay Marketplace but even them Ithink also have a hard time getting people to build a community.

Openbazaar didn't try to launch a token as well and I guess, they could have succeeded if they just launched a token to build a community.  I don;t think its too late for it.

Token on such trading platforms is a utopia! If nobody uses the platform, and does not buy for BTC, then token would not be necessary for anyone!

[verita1]

Sad news for OpenBazaar. I sincerely hope they survive. They need strategic alliances, Marketing and of course product.
There are projects that grow very fast and others take years and show difficulties like OpenBazaar. Despite the current crisis, crypto projects are at their best, the industry has become more digital and must continue with its advances and transformations.

[Potato Chips]

The tweet mentioned that the donation was only good for until the end of this year, however.

Also, this does not change the description that Openbazaar might be something similar to a webbrowser that is only wanted by a very small segment of users.

and the article doesn't say anything about the donor which extends their services until this year (cause they didn't update it). A person would be convinced they shut down yesterday (oct 1), had they only read the outdated article. It's not an update that can be shrugged off.

Openbazaar didn't try to launch a token as well and I guess, they could have succeeded if they just launched a token to build a community.  I don;t think its too late for it.

Doubt. It will most likely be used to trade in an exchange rather than a currency to be used in their platform, therefore would only form a pump and dump community and wouldn't significantly increase their platform userbase.

[hulla]

Sad to know but a lot of people here only for trading & speculations, they are not ready to support important projects

You make a good statement because there is always a preconception when issue like this rise up samething happen when bitcoin block limit were discussed and it because we cant all have the similar view about things.
With that been said, I dont think you also noticed that 90% of all crypto enthusiast around the world dont support crypto marketplace base project and i will advise to do research about it but the reason behind it is what I dont understand and it not that they dont want to support important projects.
In the meantime, it good openbazaar get the support they needed

[theskillzdatklls]

Our blog is up to spread some Openbazaar awareness and we also talked about their funding issues. We'll spread this through some of our channels in the coming days to help them out.

https://mintdice.com/blog/openbazaar-the-decentralized-marketplace-plans-for-2020-2021

[Wind_FURY]

Our blog is up to spread some Openbazaar awareness and we also talked about their funding issues. We'll spread this through some of our channels in the coming days to help them out.

https://mintdice.com/blog/openbazaar-the-decentralized-marketplace-plans-for-2020-2021

Some merits for helping out, but if OB doesn't start solving an inefficiency, then it won't scale. To solve an inefficiency, I believe opening the platform for the heroine dark market and other drugs, perhaps?

[MysteryMiner]

The problem with OpenBazaar is censorship. Plain and simple. If I cannot buy ganja, speed or spare Glock barrels due to censorship, then it is even less usable than eBay.

[Stalker22]

The problem with OpenBazaar is censorship. Plain and simple. If I cannot buy ganja, speed or spare Glock barrels due to censorship, then it is even less usable than eBay.

LOL! Looks like someone misses Silk Road.

In any case, considering how the creator of the mentioned site ended, I don't think it would be wise for them to follow that route.

[theskillzdatklls]

The problem with OpenBazaar is censorship. Plain and simple. If I cannot buy ganja, speed or spare Glock barrels due to censorship, then it is even less usable than eBay.

LOL! Looks like someone misses Silk Road.

In any case, considering how the creator of the mentioned site ended, I don't think it would be wise for them to follow that route.

It's very different. The creator of that site ran a drug marketplace which is illegal (moral/ethical issues aside). OpenBazaar is simply an open sourced program. How it is used by it's users is completely different. What you are saying would be like criminalizing Satoshi because some people have done bad things with Bitcoin at points in the past, an open sourced program. To my knowledge, the law doesn't work that way.

[Wind_FURY]

The problem with OpenBazaar is censorship. Plain and simple. If I cannot buy ganja, speed or spare Glock barrels due to censorship, then it is even less usable than eBay.

LOL! Looks like someone misses Silk Road.

In any case, considering how the creator of the mentioned site ended, I don't think it would be wise for them to follow that route.

Then it won't solve an inefficiency in the market. Why would users use it it for regular items if they have the efficient PayPal+eBay?

The online Dark Markets/Black Markets are VERY inefficient, it's very hard for buyers and sellers to meet because they are not serviced by financial institutions and legal marketplaces. Bitcoin+OpenBazaar will fix this.

[bryant.coleman]

Openbazaar didn't try to launch a token as well and I guess, they could have succeeded if they just launched a token to build a community.  I don;t think its too late for it.

They should have done that in 2017, or during the first half of 2018. But now the ICO market is in bad shape and I don't think that they will get a good response. By 2017, they had a decent enough first-cut product and there was some hype regarding it in the market. But now the interest has waned and the number of users in their platform has gone down. No one really wants to invest in a failed product.

[d5000]

Just wow. If there was a "dislike" or "dismerit" button I would use it on 95% of the answers in this thread. (But well, what am I expecting in "Bitcoin Discussion"  )

There seem to be some misconceptions about what OpenBazaar is about. Some posters for example wanted "a token" or even "DeFi" for OpenBazaar. WTF? This is an open source project, OB1 (the company requesting for donations, which have succeeded(!) as someone posted) is only basically providing some services like support, verifying moderators, and part of the development. But what could be a OpenBazaar token be useful for? There could be agreements with a group of sellers accepting that token, perhaps, but for escrow fees and the like the potential use cases are too few.

The same goes for those wanting the store to charge fees. Sorry but that would make OpenBazaar totally pointless, as there would be clearly a centralized "operator" - and then why use a P2P network? Also the absence of fees is potentially a major point for merchants to use it.

I've looked into the last version of OB and it seems not too bad, although it's a bit slow, but it's a P2P program so that has to be expected. For sure there could be improvements. The search function is an example as it seems vulnerable to keyword stuffing, also a more precise category system for goods could be useful. But it's usable. The reason I'm not using OpenBazaar is not related to the "user interface" problem but that in my region there are no local sellers at OB, and no, I wouldn't use it for someone to ship me something from the other side of the planet (I generally prefer local, or at least regional sellers).

What I'm however a bit worried about is the OB1 business model. They mention "services" but the only source of income I could think about for now is escrower fees.

[stompix]

There seem to be some misconceptions about what OpenBazaar is about. Some posters for example wanted "a token" or even "DeFi" for OpenBazaar. WTF? This is an open source project, OB1 (the company requesting for donations, which have succeeded(!) as someone posted) is only basically providing some services like support, verifying moderators, and part of the development. But what could be a OpenBazaar token be useful for? There could be agreements with a group of sellers accepting that token, perhaps, but for escrow fees and the like the potential use cases are too few.

The same question with almost all tokens, do they have a reason to exist in the first place?
Do I need a token to buy soap, one to share a car, one to bet, one to start a smart contract with my cat, one to verify how much monofluorophosphate my toothpaste has, and one to track the monkey that has picked up my bananas?

A token for OB would have managed to do a single thing, end this project way faster as it would have ended devalued and with a ton of angry "investors" screaming around they are not getting millions ...from what? From a shop that is supposed to be cheaper and with lesser fees than a centralized marketplace? This is a way of thinking I won't understand ever, a lot of projects come with a way of doing things for a smaller fee than traditional service but at the same time, they claim they can make way more profit, from what? Not even mentioning the fact that if they would have made the token somewhat mandatory in order to use it or get some god knows what discount they would have reduced their userbase from two to one.

But it's usable. The reason I'm not using OpenBazaar is not related to the "user interface" problem but that in my region there are no local sellers at OB, and no, I wouldn't use it for someone to ship me something from the other side of the planet (I generally prefer local, or at least regional sellers).

The electric car dilemma, there are no sellers because there are no shoppers and there are no shoppers because there are no sellers. 

[d5000]

The same question with almost all tokens, do they have a reason to exist in the first place?
Do I need a token to buy soap, one to share a car, one to bet, one to start a smart contract with my cat, one to verify how much monofluorophosphate my toothpaste has, and one to track the monkey that has picked up my bananas?

I don't see tokens as negative if there's really a clear for-profit business model behind them. Then, it's simply a way of crowdfunding, or a replacement of a typical loan.

But OB isn't really for-profit ... you could imagine some profitable services attached to it, but for that justifying a token or any mass participation in financing, it would have to be much bigger, I would even say it would have to compete with eBay/Amazon for a token to make sense.

Anyway, if OB1 goes away this does probably not mean that OpenBazaar is doomed, only that probably development will be slower until another team steps in.

The electric car dilemma, there are no sellers because there are no shoppers and there are no shoppers because there are no sellers. 

Yep, true. There are ways out of that dilemma however, for example communication/"marketing" efforts could be concentrated to places with a high "Bitcoiner" population where it may be easier to reach a critical mass. Another example could be plugins for shop software which automate the creation of an OpenBazaar shop without much additional effort for the merchant. OpenBazaar would then work as a kind of aggregator for independent merchant sites, providing a common user experience.