Quote from: mnmShadyBTC on October 13, 2014, 02:34:42 AM

Quote from: knight22 on October 08, 2014, 03:38:21 AM

Quote from: ANTIcentralized on October 07, 2014, 05:46:10 AM

Quote from: knight22 on October 06, 2014, 05:37:37 PM

Quote from: coinbiz on October 06, 2014, 09:27:03 AM

OpenBazaar is a great concept, and from the moment I learned of bitcoin, I kept wanting to build something like this myself (though sadly I never got around to it).

I think the beauty of the idea is that since it's decentralized by nature, anyone can build their own 'eBay' site/app to list the many products/services available throughout OpenBazaar. It would be like if eBay was open source and you didn't have to ever go to 'ebay.com' to buy/sell anything. I think early on this sort of concept would be best opened to developers to build applications/sites through which the later wave of public users could actually use. At this stage, it's too early for wide usage.

The major flaw though is that there is no incentive for arbitrators because there are no fees. And because there are no incentives for arbitrators, there will be a lot of scams abound ... or you'll have to rely on building trust over time; trustworthy buyers and repeat customers. So, I don't see this turning into eBay per se, but more of a decentralized e-commerce platform for shops, though still, it can easily become scam central.

Really, in the end, unfortunately it will work best for dark markets, which may in effect possibly drive up bitcoin transactions more than legal markets. Regardless of how much the OpenBazaar team claims to be against the sale of illegal goods/services, this platform will be best used for that purpose.

For it to work well for legal goods/services, there would have to be a fee structure with incentives for arbitrators/escrow services.

There will be fees to the arbitrators if arbitrage is needed. No fees apply only if the trade goes smooth.

I think this could potentially result in arbitrators receiving a higher then warranted level of trust within the community. The arbitrator could "oversee" hundreds of transactions and never have to intervene with their trust getting built up, however their judgement nor their ability to be trusted would be tested. This could result in people being able to scam because the arbitrator does not know how to tell a scam is being pulled off or because the arbitrator is in on the scam

It all depend on how the reputation system will work but I find very unlikely the arbitrators will receive any fees nor reputation "points" for transactions that went smooth and therefore didn't require their services.

I would think that "escrow" would receive something for a smooth transaction. If they only received credit for the mediated transactions then one party would likely always say they acted unfairly (otherwise they would not have had to step in the first place). Also if the escrow only gives a partial refund to one party then both parties could potentially give negative feedback because they do not agree.

I can't see any situation where escrow would receive anything except for when they are not needed to mediate

I'm not sure to get your point. If a transaction when through smoothly it means that both party (seller and buyer) would agree to sign the transaction. The escrow signature is therefore not being used so both parties shouldn't have the ability to vote either good or bad and have a neutral effect on the escrow's reputation. Escrows don't have to step for transactions that go smooth.