I'm constantly thinking about this. Without reputation, no one sane will send you money upfront.
How do I know that npub is ross?
More generally, how do I now it's not a scam.
I have some ideas with bonds and cashu, but still don't know if it can be done without aribiters. And who's gonna trust them?
Seriously have been thinking about that for at least a year.
We need some sort of blind oracle for this.
Building reputation always takes time. Sending payments to strangers online needs a leap of faith. I've done that many many times and fortunatelly the times I've been scammed were very few and involved slightly deffective items, not total rip offs.
So I think the reputation thing is related to the npub itself and its history. But you never really know.
Maybe Nostr doesn't need a special marketplace app, maybe it just needs some kind of auction widget (similar to the lightning invoice, just interactive). Dunno. But probably it's just that people just don't think there is a big enough group of people on nostr for it to be an attractive place for commerce?
a NIP-05 verification on a domain understood to be owned by that person is pretty legit.
domain is like $20 at most. cert matches. ok, but is that you? more importantly, how do I verify?
AI can even (vieo) call you.
web of trust is the only way.
or no trust at all (preffered)
