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532 sats \ 2 replies \ @justin_shocknet 8h \ on: Are bitcoin-only online marketplaces unworkable at scale? bitcoin
Back in the day there was a very successful eBay clone of sorts called BitMit, it was so successful in fact that it shut down after the price pumped... because why would you risk running something like that once you've made hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin?
I can't remember if it had escrow, but reputation was a big part of it. Reputation is the key. Escrow is easy once you have reputation for the escrow provider.
Also the kind of things in the marketplace matters, crafts and bullshit like Etsy hosts don't need the finality or censorship resistance of Bitcoin...
BitMit was really big for giftcards for example, and that has obviously become its own industry since with the likes of BitRefill/BTCCO/Paxful
The next obvious marketplace using Bitcoin for MoE will be other PoW type services, like we're seeing with AI/Compute/Storage resources.
Everyone selling cloud/data services will need the finality and granularity of Lightning to remain competitive very soon, that's a marketplace. Cutsie t-shirts and mugs with mom jokes on them comes way later.
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17 sats \ 1 reply \ @stack_harder OP 6h
reputation systems are key, but i dont know what the best ones are, short of a large amount of feedback for a user. gaming amazon reviews and things like that is a huge business and problem for them
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 6h
Yea it's a tricky problem, chicken and egg factor, also there's no real consensus around an identity layer on which to build one.
Amazon is a great example of botted reviews, but it mostly works only due to the nature of fiat being reversible so Amazon is a defacto escrow.
Anything new based on Bitcoin you're inherently outsourcing reputation to the centralized entity running the marketplace, so I think bonding will be a factor, otherwise without KYC where does the coordinator inherit reputation from?
WoT relays to deal with spam on Nostr are a signal IMO, if Nostr can get a little more traction as an identity layer it provides something to built a WoT and therefore reputation systems out of.
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