A Bit of History recap
For centuries since the Egyptians, classified ads have served as a simple yet effective way to exclusively connect buyers and sellers. If you think about it, the first form of writing signs1 were made to materializes and keep track of commercial exchanges, writing as useful accounting tool. Later on, with the evolution of alphabets and numbers, from dusty newspapers to the digital haven like Craigslist, these listings have facilitated countless transactions and enabled an underground economy that most of the time plays out of the tyrannic eye of regulators. The amounts are usually small (because it's hard to build trust for bigger deals) so there's no real interest on wasting resources for few-bucks-transactions and try to eat on it. However, we are seeing more and more bigger players asking for light KYC data to post an ad: a phone number it's now a must to verify an account, and phone numbers are, in most of the cases, linked with an ID.
Always the same game of third parties, trying to diminish the inherent trust gap between strangers that usually creates friction and uncertainty. These are few of the various reasons why we are betting on P2P Bitcoin free market, we all know the others. On our side, we blindly trust Bitcoin, and the network of communities it is enabling and empowering. Bitcoin is already covering that function in and between communities to enable trust and a free and circular economy. SN particularly, is one of these communities and now even more, it enables a more sovereign way to manage funds in the platform, with the ability to connect directly to your own node or preferred wallet2.
As mentioned more times, this is, from our perspective, a prosperous ground for this free market to take place, offering a revolutionary solution for classified ads on Stacker News. It's inevitable, and it will come3.
The Trust Deficit: A P2P Conundrum
Trust, it take time to build it, and when broken, it's really hard to bond it back.
Let's face it, the traditional classified ad system is ripe with potential pitfalls and you'll always find on any platform some sort of scam. A buyer might worry about receiving a broken product or facing a seller who disappears after receiving payment. Conversely, sellers fear encountering non-paying buyers or fraudulent transactions. If you think about that, Airbnb, was one of the first braking through this problem and enable seamless payments between guests and hosts. Once you set it up, you'll forget about paying during the flow and focus more on the conversation with the other party to make sure everything will go well. Their support team has probably a lot of work to do, but we all recognize the value that it has provided to the market.
Stacker News is no stranger to these challenges. We are an active community fostering innovation and constructive conversations, classified ads often require a leap of faith, especially for expensive or intricate items like buying a car, or hiring someone for a service, or renting a house. You'd trust SN community to find someone willing to go P2P?
SN to become the Hero: Enabling Covenants for Secure Transactions
And here is the hidden gem! Bitcoin covenants. This function of bitcoin could offer a unique solution that helps self-executing agreements, stored onchain, and transform classified ads on Stacker News into secure, automated transactions without the need of any third party. Still early days, but looking back, as humans we always tend, to merge technologies and make them more interoperable. Look at the iPhone, the first phone, that had a bunch of other functional apps that competitors were not even thinking about. So why should not personalized ads be merged with the technology that enable its payments itself?
Let's consider our latest Ad-post4 as an example and see how Covenants could automate Long-Term Rentals. Here's a glimpse into how it could look:
- Posting the listing and the contract agreement on SN, with length options, pictures and obviously including monthly rent, security deposit amount, lease duration (in this case 2 months) and --listen carefully to this--a detailed inspection report with photos stored onchain. Yes, you hear this right, ordinals could finally be used and serve a functional case!
- Covenant creation where owner and tenant directly sign the lease agreement (covenant) on Stacker News, maybe communicating via private DMs enabled by nostr. Once agreed upon, both parties electronically sign the lease agreement, which is then uploaded and linked to the covenant deployed on onchain.
- For security and Rent, the tenant locks a portion of the security deposit (e.g. 50%) and the total rent for the agreed lease term (minus the first month's rent). This ensures the long-term financial security for the landlord, that will sign accordingly after receiving a notification.
- Automated Payments for the rent is automatically deducted from the locked funds in the transaction, let's say on a weekly basis, and transferred to the landlord.
- Inspections, as stipulated in the lease, are facilitated through the platform. Both parties record the property's condition with photos and timestamps and, again, store the media files as ordinals.
- Maintenance requests could similarly work, but in this case it's more probable a new agreement need to be stipulated, together with a new evaluation for the repairs.
- When the lease completion date arrives the security deposit could return, if there are no outstanding issues or property damage claims, the covenant automagically releases the remaining security deposit back to the tenant.
- In case of any dispute, or disagreements that arise about property at the end of the lease, each party could bring the dispute resolution sharing it publicly with the community, for example with a poll (also powered by nostr) where stackers vote based on evidence provided by both parties. I know, it's a delicate topic!
Do you think this scenario is too far from us? Sci-fi? I agree this flow is probably oversimplified, and my lack of technical knowledge could make some affirmations a total nonsense. Any comment on this will be much appreciated.
A step forward into the Future for a secure P2P Circular Economy
There's no doubt challenges exist, applying covenants to classifieds on SN could be just one of the possible applications, with the potential to revolutionize online transactions, making them much more secure in the long term, trustless and transparent for everyone involved. Stacker.News ~AGORA marketplace and the community itself would enormously benefit about this feature. It could also attract new users, boost engagement, and solidify SN position as a leader in innovative online interaction in cypherspace.
I just wanted to share a useful case where Bitcoin covenants, with their ability to program restrictions on transactions, could come into play in a real life scenario. Stacker News, being a platform known for embracing of innovation, could potentially serve as a facilitator for such complex deals, but not be responsible for any issue between the parties. It's time to experiment, let's innovate and expand SN boundaries further! With practice and patience, we can ensure balanced result.
So a little summary for the TLDR lovers:
- A continuation of history, merging stuff together meanwhile technology evolve
- Building trustless communities: SN as facilitator
- Ad-post type as a melt of classified listings, covenants and ordinals
- Sci-fi! The future is now.
That's all, stackers!
MAY EVERY DEAL ₿RING JOY TO YOUR ~AGORA AD-VENTURES!
Footnotes
-
The cuneiform script, created in Mesopotamia (today Iraq), ca. 3200 BC. From The Evolution of Writing on Utexas ↩
-
SN release: NWC & LNBits for sending, LND for autowithdraw - but not many are using it yet! Guys, you are so far ahead of time! ↩
First of all
Secondly
Lastly
Firstly
Secondly
Lastly
Summarizing