Facebook Marketplace, Amazon, Airbnb and Cash App, in one platform priced in sat

[Ucy]

This will be more suitable for local/physical transactions due to absence of escrow and arbiters so that a product description is verified on site (plus other verifications) before payment is made. And it's OK that funds are not held or transferred through the marketplace since it's centralized, can vanish with the funds, can be confisticated, etc  I think a decentralized escrow would be needed unless you want thls to be purely a local thing.
Hope there are provisions for product reviews and seller's reputations

Thanks Ucy, that is how I see it too. Local and in person is where it works best right now, and not holding funds is deliberate for exactly the reason you gave.

Reviews and seller reputation are already in. Sellers have a star rating built from reviews only, with the review count beside it, so nothing is handed out by the platform.

Decentralized escrow is on the table for going beyond local deals, and I am keeping the options open on how it gets done. Either way it needs users first, and marketing is honestly not my strongest side, so that is where my focus is.

Ofcourse.
Also, try to see if you can keep the marketplace data decentralized or well backed up so that If the current site is stopped for whatever reason, the data can easily be migrated to another site by participants. This should make the marketplace somewhat censorship resistant and decentralized. You should however ensure that activities are transparent and ethical in other to give the censorship resistance and decentralized approach enough legitimacy.


For attracting lots of participants and customers, I believe there should be alternative for quick crypto to fiat conversion for local sellers who wouldn't want to hold crypto. And on the website, members could list things they regularly/occasionally buy and share the list with local sellers to attract those who can supply the needs. And you could try encouraging mutually beneficial trading — buyers can aswell check their sellers "need lists" and supply them too



Wish you all the best

[jhone225]

Gave you a few merits because nothing like this to my knowledge exists yet, but yes, we who like P2P for BTC must use escrow, but I understand will be difficult for you to code unless you get help.

Now I also do P2P without escrow but that is for swapping currencies, and usually because of great trust and reputation of years.

Don't think it works for this, most of these transactions will be one time only.

So I think the escrow option must be built in for this to work, unfortunately.

Thanks for the merits slaman29. The point about reputation is fair.

The idea stands for local meetups the way Facebook Marketplace does, you inspect before you pay. For long distance there are verified stores, real businesses with a name and a reputation on the line, which is a different kind of risk than a stranger.

Escrow is definitely something I am considering, but I am at the beginning here, so wish me luck.

[slaman29]

Thanks for the merits slaman29. The point about reputation is fair.

The idea stands for local meetups the way Facebook Marketplace does, you inspect before you pay. For long distance there are verified stores, real businesses with a name and a reputation on the line, which is a different kind of risk than a stranger.

Escrow is definitely something I am considering, but I am at the beginning here, so wish me luck.

Most welcome, and yeah FB Marketplace I think I know how it works now, even if my experience is limited there, I know even in my area there are listings (but more like a FB page where people post with own accounts, and that itself is their reputation/identity at stake, I get it.

That actually was how BTC P2P even worked (Face to Face) before it got popular, so everything starts there.

I believe there are some addon options people have built, but no idea how good or open source they are and certainly, you are at the beginning requiring luck.

[jhone225]

members could list things they regularly/occasionally buy and share the list with local sellers to attract those who can supply the needs

Thanks Ucy. Your suggestion is in, buyers can post what they are after now. The need list is a different shape so I need to think it through, but I want to get there. Same with the data portability, I will see what I can do.

I believe there are some addon options people have built, but no idea how good or open source they are

slaman29, you are right that the account is the reputation. That is what I am counting on to keep people honest. On those addons, everything I found is for swapping bitcoin and cash, nothing for buying a real item. Send me one if you remember it.

[slaman29]

slaman29, you are right that the account is the reputation. That is what I am counting on to keep people honest. On those addons, everything I found is for swapping bitcoin and cash, nothing for buying a real item. Send me one if you remember it.

I honestly can't find it myself but I remember it was like an addon you as a website could add that could create a wallet of multisig (so both buyer and seller need to sign it to send the tx).

I looked online and these seem to work similar.

https://theya.us/solutions/payment-solutions/escrow
https://uniscrow.com/blockchain-escrow-payment/
https://smartlink.so/

The last one is web3 so I guess it works for MetaMask rather than BTC but I think the idea is very similar!

[Vod]

slaman29, you are right that the account is the reputation. That is what I am counting on to keep people honest. On those addons, everything I found is for swapping bitcoin and cash, nothing for buying a real item. Send me one if you remember it.

jhone,

#1) Please don't post twice in a row - instead you can edit your first post to include new information (and clean up quotes)

#2) You are counting on an unvetted reputation to keep people honest?  If your services gets any growth it will be gamed by exchanging positive trust from throw away accounts.   Don't assume people respect their privacy enough to be honest. 

[TheButterZone]

Provably linking all potential rating system identities into one gigantic meta-web of trust can't come soon enough, let alone even just 2...

NIP-XX: Bitcoin-OTC Identity Linkage Proof

[jhone225]

slaman29, you are right that the account is the reputation. That is what I am counting on to keep people honest. On those addons, everything I found is for swapping bitcoin and cash, nothing for buying a real item. Send me one if you remember it.

jhone,

#1) Please don't post twice in a row - instead you can edit your first post to include new information (and clean up quotes)

#2) You are counting on an unvetted reputation to keep people honest?  If your services gets any growth it will be gamed by exchanging positive trust from throw away accounts.   Don't assume people respect their privacy enough to be honest. 

Fair on the double post, my mistake. You are right the rating can be gamed. Stars only show after five reviews, but fake accounts can still work around that. No fix without escrow or money on the line, and I cannot hold funds on my own. Bisq gave up on ratings for the same reason, and I am thinking of doing the same, pulling reviews until I have enough users and escrow in place.

Provably linking all potential rating system identities into one gigantic meta-web of trust can't come soon enough

Reputation that follows a person across sites would fix a lot of this. Nothing usable exists yet, but I would rather plug into something open than build my own closed version.

[slaman29]

Provably linking all potential rating system identities into one gigantic meta-web of trust can't come soon enough, let alone even just 2...

Yes, something like this was always what a lot of us in P2P swapping were always saying even during our forex days. The guys I traded with started knowing each other even by our account numbers locally, and then some of us went into crypto, and localbitcoins, our bank accounts same for over 20+ years. That was the sort of giant trust system we all understood no matter which platform we found ourselves on. But that only worked locally.

If somehow you could build this forum's account user into the same system, those of us with accounts staked as reputation is a big trust positive I think, identity is not enough as @Vod says, so many people willing to lose it to scam big.