I watched openbazaar from the start, through many 'refactorings' and design changes (mainly networking problems.
It is truly a disappointment, but did have lessons to be learnt.
Bitmessage is a horrible bandwidth black hole, for example. I can't see you getting to ebay sized traffic with that. How do you keep it under control?
Tor and anonymity are definitely a plus. OB seemed to steer away deliberately from this, despite it's origins as a darkmarket.
I believe OB has decided to allow 2 party transactions, reluctantly, but I don't know if there will be a security deposit mandated.
Overall, this looks like a job well done. It's a pity it didn't get more notice earlier.
Thanks! We're not committed long term to Bitmessage, but it looked like the only practical and working solution at the time. We'd be happy to move to any solid working solution for messaging that's an improvement over Bitmessage and can maintain privacy&anonymity, scale to our needs and address the problem of spam (Bitmessage does that via proof of work stamps).