Openbazaar needs your support

[Potato Chips]

The article is outdated, they were able to secure funds for until this year so those supporting services to OB and their app won't shutdown in Oct 1. The end game doesn't change though, unless they can fix what they lacked-- enough users/working business model.  Relying on donations to run without enough userbase won't work either as it is unsustainable.

BREAKING NEWS!

An anonymous donor has agreed to cover the costs to run OpenBazaar infrastructure through at least the end of the year.

and looks like OB1 won't be the main dev?

The future of @openbazaar will be more independence from @OB1Company. More news on that soon.

[Shasha80]

The development of Openbazaar is quite bad, even though a marketplace like Openbazaar is really needed. Because there are rarely
marketplaces that accept cryptocurrency as a payment option, Openbazaar marketing team should have a good promotional strategy.
So Openbazaar can be better known by the cryptocurrency community, I'm sure there are still many who don't know Openbazaar.
With a good promotion I am sure there will be many users who use Openbazaar to spend their crypto.

[stompix]

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.

If there was a real need for such a market and only one option like openbazaar people would have already flooded it, both sellers and clients, thing which didn't happen

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.

Yeah, and for every guy that complains centralized services has ripped him off and not offered a refund, there is also one that got scammed in a decentralized service.
It's not laziness, it's the natural fear of customers that don't want to buy something from a stranger without the possibility of a refund or customer support, it's a seller paradise but a buyer's nightmare. I for example pay a premium when buying electronics from a shop compared to others and many like me do this because they don't ask any question when you return a product, they have free of charge pick-up on returns or warranty issues and delivery and they are reimbursing you in maximum 24hours. They are more expensive but they also have half of the market share at least.

Oh, and don't start with the escrow and mediator feature.
I am a customer I'm sending you back the product give me back my money, no mediator, no escrow, these are the laws in the EU!

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.

You don't need a bank account to buy from most online platforms here, nor a credit card, all platforms I know, including chain stores are offering cash on delivery payment.

[kryptqnick]

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.

I think that OpenBazaar might have faced the trouble of Nintendo's Virtual Boy. It was basically the first VR headset, oriented on the mass market. The idea was great, the implementation has serious troubles. Most importantly, they just did it too early. VR indeed found its audience in the 21st century, but at the end of the previous century the society wasn't ready. OpenBazaar seems like a cool decentralized platform that both implemented decentralization and allowed decentralized payment options (and perhaps only cryptos, no centralized payment options as far as I see). It was too innovative, not perfectly implemented and too early in the world where most are fine with centralized money and markets.

[Ucy]

Thought the marketplace had a deal with Bitcoincash few years ago or so?
Anyway, I think for a decentralized marketplace to work well in Crypto space it needs to be built within some sort of VM cryptocurrency ecosystem and made to interact with other decentralized applications/businesses. More like DeFi on Ethereum network.
A Cryptocurrency Network needs to encourage/incentive a thriving and sustainable economy built around it. You could have lots of interdependent Decentralized Applications interacting with one another in their ecosystems rather than hoping to compete with traditional businesses.
 Things will be much easier for cryptocurrency developers once they know/understand how to run a Nation. A Decentralized Crypto Network is more like a Nation.

[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/

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.

Just like those "decentralized" projects, they're more with PR but well yeah, guess it's no longer helpful on their part.

BREAKING NEWS!

An anonymous donor has agreed to cover the costs to run OpenBazaar infrastructure through at least the end of the year.

Well see what's next after this year.

[tomahawk9]

The article is outdated, they were able to secure funds for until this year so those supporting services to OB and their app won't shutdown in Oct 1. The end game doesn't change though, unless they can fix what they lacked-- enough users/working business model.  Relying on donations to run without enough userbase won't work either as it is unsustainable.

BREAKING NEWS!

An anonymous donor has agreed to cover the costs to run OpenBazaar infrastructure through at least the end of the year.

everyone in the cryptosphere cares so much about OpenBazaar that this tweet received an staggering 200 likes! *sarcasm*

next year there'll be another cry for help & donations 🙄 they should just let it die, it's very clear that after what, 4 years now, no one uses this thing and no one (except that one person who donated) cares about a decentralized marketplace, at least for now. Majority of people nowadays, not just from the general public but also cryptocurrency users, would rather put their trust on centralized services than in things like Bitify or OpenBazaar, and i'm certainly one of those when it comes to spending BTC to buy products.

[Ucy]

The article is outdated, they were able to secure funds for until this year so those supporting services to OB and their app won't shutdown in Oct 1. The end game doesn't change though, unless they can fix what they lacked-- enough users/working business model.  Relying on donations to run without enough userbase won't work either as it is unsustainable.

BREAKING NEWS!

An anonymous donor has agreed to cover the costs to run OpenBazaar infrastructure through at least the end of the year.

everyone in the cryptosphere cares so much about OpenBazaar that this tweet received an staggering 200 likes! *sarcasm*

next year there'll be another cry for help & donations 🙄 they should just let it die, it's very clear that after what, 4 years now, no one uses this thing and no one (except that one person who donated) cares about a decentralized marketplace, at least for now. Majority of people nowadays, not just from the general public but also cryptocurrency users, would rather put their trust on centralized services than in things like Bitify or OpenBazaar, and i'm certainly one of those when it comes to spending BTC to buy products.

Well, it's not really about whether someone believes/cares about decentralized marketplaces/applications or not, it's about the sustaining the principles of Bitcoin like decentralization and its anti-fragility.  I would be seriously worried about a cryptocurrency filled with centralized marketplaces/exchanges/applications. They could corrupt and turn a cryptocurrency into centralized zombie.
It make no sense to flee a dictatorial country to a democratic one while supporting the dictatorial ideologies of the country in your newly adopted country.
I believe it won't be difficult atall to have a decentralized marketplace/exchanges/applications work very well on a decentralized cryptocurrency network.

[californiaquail]

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.

 

Hey bud I donated what I could, because as a crypto-marketplace owner, I feel your disarray, but I think this has nothing to do with decentralisation.

My best guess is that our industry is still in its "earning & learning & holding" phase, and certainly not the spending phase.



I started a Bitcoin luxury marketplace  back in 2016 when 1 btc was worth $600.
I would have never expected that $20k rally to happen so quickly. Neither its downfall.
A couple of years forward, we do have some users buying and selling art, or even luxury items in crypto, so that aspect of my bet turned out positive.

That being said, our overall numbers are nothing to brag about, and certainly worth walking into a VC with. Otherwise, my concept ( and yours ) would have been replicated a thousand times already, by people with way deeper pockets than ours.

I'm still positive there will be a vast market for crypto-marketplaces once Bitcoin's marketcap hits a certain threshold

I just don't think that threshold has yet been met, but, once that happens,we'll already have seniority, press, and trust, which ( in this industry ) is worth way more than any money you could spend.
There's no questions about it, when we met that threshold, I'll be the first customer of crypto marketplaces ( personally, I'll consider spending when it hits  $100k ) .

Because frankly, let's cut the B.S., even as founders, if we ask ourselves honestly, we'd rather hold onto our crypto than trying to spend it on whatever.



Anyway, I sent you $10 worth of BTC@blockchain.com/btc/tx/be8e3782c1cdda4c340725df5dde1142156e62ca59da4508c9ba69fca8da9c92 because I really believe you are in the right, and that you're doing something important, even though timing is not on our side.
 
That being said, let me know what you think, and I'd like to have a chat with you or whatever, I really like your mission.

[bbc.reporter]

The article is outdated, they were able to secure funds for until this year so those supporting services to OB and their app won't shutdown in Oct 1. The end game doesn't change though, unless they can fix what they lacked-- enough users/working business model.  Relying on donations to run without enough userbase won't work either as it is unsustainable.

BREAKING NEWS!

An anonymous donor has agreed to cover the costs to run OpenBazaar infrastructure through at least the end of the year.

and looks like OB1 won't be the main dev?

The future of @openbazaar will be more independence from @OB1Company. More news on that soon.

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.

[theskillzdatklls]

The article is outdated, they were able to secure funds for until this year so those supporting services to OB and their app won't shutdown in Oct 1. The end game doesn't change though, unless they can fix what they lacked-- enough users/working business model.  Relying on donations to run without enough userbase won't work either as it is unsustainable.

BREAKING NEWS!

An anonymous donor has agreed to cover the costs to run OpenBazaar infrastructure through at least the end of the year.

everyone in the cryptosphere cares so much about OpenBazaar that this tweet received an staggering 200 likes! *sarcasm*

next year there'll be another cry for help & donations 🙄 they should just let it die, it's very clear that after what, 4 years now, no one uses this thing and no one (except that one person who donated) cares about a decentralized marketplace, at least for now. Majority of people nowadays, not just from the general public but also cryptocurrency users, would rather put their trust on centralized services than in things like Bitify or OpenBazaar, and i'm certainly one of those when it comes to spending BTC to buy products.

I think this is the wrong attitude. Supporting platforms like this means quite a bit to the success of Bitcoin. Designing something like this is also extremely difficult, so it will take them a lot of time. While the argument isn't the same, you could just use similar logic and say "there's no need for Bitcoin with centralized services like the dollar and euro providing great value as it is". It's simply not true or correct.

[mk4]

I think that OpenBazaar might have faced the trouble of Nintendo's Virtual Boy. It was basically the first VR headset, oriented on the mass market. The idea was great, the implementation has serious troubles. Most importantly, they just did it too early. VR indeed found its audience in the 21st century, but at the end of the previous century the society wasn't ready. OpenBazaar seems like a cool decentralized platform that both implemented decentralization and allowed decentralized payment options (and perhaps only cryptos, no centralized payment options as far as I see). It was too innovative, not perfectly implemented and too early in the world where most are fine with centralized money and markets.

OpenBazaar could be too early, but I think it's mostly that they haven't figured out the UI/UX problem. The masses are a lot more geared towards using the platforms that are easy to use, not necessarily using the best in terms of privacy and decentralization. It's the same exact reason why the masses are geared towards using centralized exchanges like Coinbase and Binance in contrast to non-custodial exchanges like Bisq and HodlHodl.

[pooya87]

If there was a real need for such a market and only one option like openbazaar people would have already flooded it, both sellers and clients, thing which didn't happen

having a need and doing something about it are different things though. usually people don't like change even if the new thing were better. that is one of the reasons why bitcoin adoption is so slow. but you made a good point about less customer security that i wasn't thinking about.

[imstillthebest]

The article is outdated, they were able to secure funds for until this year so those supporting services to OB and their app won't shutdown in Oct 1. The end game doesn't change though, unless they can fix what they lacked-- enough users/working business model.  Relying on donations to run without enough userbase won't work either as it is unsustainable.

BREAKING NEWS!

An anonymous donor has agreed to cover the costs to run OpenBazaar infrastructure through at least the end of the year.

everyone in the cryptosphere cares so much about OpenBazaar that this tweet received an staggering 200 likes! *sarcasm*

next year there'll be another cry for help & donations 🙄 they should just let it die, it's very clear that after what, 4 years now, no one uses this thing and no one (except that one person who donated) cares about a decentralized marketplace, at least for now. Majority of people nowadays, not just from the general public but also cryptocurrency users, would rather put their trust on centralized services than in things like Bitify or OpenBazaar, and i'm certainly one of those when it comes to spending BTC to buy products.

I think this is the wrong attitude. Supporting platforms like this means quite a bit to the success of Bitcoin. Designing something like this is also extremely difficult, so it will take them a lot of time.

nothing wrong with that . thats just his opinion and you also have yours so you should respect each other . i love everything that is decentralize and i obviously love the concept of this openbazar but il also be mad at them if they will only rely on donation to run thier business  . maybe there is something that they lack of and why people are not going back to use them or no new people that gets attracted to them  . cant you see there are sites that are also dying and have died down but we never see those sites ask for help  . they came up with this idea so they should have the ability to stand on thier own

[gentlemand]

OpenBazaar could be too early, but I think it's mostly that they haven't figured out the UI/UX problem. The masses are a lot more geared towards using the platforms that are easy to use, not necessarily using the best in terms of privacy and decentralization. It's the same exact reason why the masses are geared towards using centralized exchanges like Coinbase and Binance in contrast to non-custodial exchanges like Bisq and HodlHodl.

If Bitcoin ever is to be a currency I think it's going to be the final phase, not near the first. You've got to get through the speculation bit and get well into the store of value and then you might get a currency so they're crazily early.

I applaud the fact that it exists but it's clear there's little to no desire for it. And ultimately I myself can never see the point of a decentralised marketplace for vanilla goods. There's more hassle, more friction and no gain as far as I can tell. A buy is a one time thing I need fulfilling in the most convenient way. There's no philosophy tied to it.

Different for less developed countries so I hope the idea remains alive until its time comes. Could be a wait. Until then someone should be doing dark market stuff which is the true use case for now.

[Wind_FURY]

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.

People WILL USE Bitcoins if it is completely necessary.

Openbazaar didn't scale because it doesn't solve an inefficiency. Why would an ordinary person go through the inefficiency of buying Bitcoin to use Openbazaar? They can use Etsy and credit cards.

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

Yes, because Bitcoin solves an inefficiency for buying drugs from the internet drug dealers because credit cards can't be used. Few understand this.

[erikoy]

I'd better help the homeless and the likes rather than help the Openbazaar for their interest. It seems that saving humanity is more important than this project. Anyway, if there are people who tries to see the project worth it then you can possibly get donation from them. The last resort that you could do aside from getting donations if there are none who will going to donate and to make the platform come to the next phase then selling it to other individuals who will be interested to fund and develop the platform will do. I think it is not bad either than letting your platform closed due to short of funds or something at least you earn from it by selling the platform.

[stompix]

but you made a good point about less customer security that i wasn't thinking about.

Well, a lot of people focus on the wrong thing in business, that's why a lot of them failed.
I experienced this with the family business also, although we don't have that many choices when selling our products but in the end no matter how revolutionary your product is, no matter how good you think you are it's the clients that decide your fate, and sometimes it comes pretty fast.

Also, there is something people here should understand, the fact they are not really being objective when it comes to crypto projects.
Let's say that a new type of decentralized shop would make its way directly on the ETH blockchain, do you think it will get the same praise? Nope, a lot of bitcoiners will simply slam the idea just because it involves eth and not bitcoin, although it's still a decentralized shop. To be objective you have to see this from the point of the newcomers to crypto, which as gentlemand pointed out, are not really keen on even spending bitcoin, forget about using a certain platform for it.

Thought the marketplace had a deal with Bitcoincash few years ago or so?
Anyway, I think for a decentralized marketplace to work well in Crypto space it needs to be built within some sort of VM cryptocurrency ecosystem and made to interact with other decentralized applications/businesses. More like DeFi on Ethereum network.

O yeah, DeFi, let's throw a bit of hype on a dead project, what can actually Defi do for an online shop?

[gentlemand]

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.

[target]

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.