Apparently OpenBazaar has started building stuff again. I used OpenBazaar 2.0 to buy Bitcon stickers before they closed everything down but I have no idea about their tech/spec.
Discussion
Interesting as v2 kind of never went anywhere and I was confused by that. Maybe silkroad stigma?
I looked at the code and some basic DHT async loops setup using libp2p.
Would be quite interesting if it could have a Nostr component. It could be the first p2p project that bridges relays and p2p for Nostr.
“v2 didn’t went anywhere”
How so? Maybe I used v1 then? I am pretty sure I remember connecting to OB2..
It wasn’t vapourware.. it just didn’t get traction and development slowed until it stopped. Maybe I dropped out of the loop too.
I thought at the time “there was enough market demand and a way to pay using Bitcoin - this thing is sure to live on”. But I only ever saw small and experimental stores that looked like tests.
I support the idea 100%. And now is a good time to reimagine decentralised marketplaces.
No I actually used OB1 I think. Seems like OB1 was a for-profit company and the infrastructure costs was too high.
https://medium.com/@therealopenbazaar/openbazaar-needs-your-support-75fe7e117ad1
Damn. Hard to read that. I liked the team, and they seemed to do a really solid job from memory.
Hopefully it was just too early.
My daughter was selling rubber bracelets on OB1. Her first BTC was made with those bracelets.
Sad that they went down the BCH path.
OB was waaay too early. Barely anyone was using Bitcoin then, and other than censorship resistance and novelty everything about using it for commerce was meh. DHTs have crappy UX (slow) and running your own things is a drag. On top of it there's just a standard bootstrapping problem: you need sellers to make buyers bother, but you need buyers to make sellers bother.