Thanks for your response. Let me really try to think about the disputes issue.
So maybe if there is if there were multiple people (let's say 4 in this example) who were picked at random to verify the payment and the product were correct before the transaction was made (let's say every time the verifiers do it, they get paid the equivalent of .005 XMR). Let's say that the verifiers also get their transactions audited by multiple folks as well to ensure no shenanigans.
I could absolutely see this working for selling digital products (like NFTs, porn, databases, cyber tools, and my obsession betting)... I think this kind of decentralization would be difficult for selling physical products unless the verifiers got shipped the product first to verify it but we can think why that would be a bad idea. I guess there are already disputes that markets have to do for physical products already so maybe it would be the same level of difficult but just waaaay slower to process (which things being slower because of the human verifiers would be the main issues folks would have in this market).
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So maybe it could work like this:
- some one would still need to run the site/GUI and they would get paid a small fee from every successful transaction and donations but they no longer centrally hold the funds.
- Buyers and vendors have to agree on the number of verifiers for a transaction to commence (it could be that they want 20 verifiers and the sale will commence if 85% agree that things are in order). So the decentralized part is the escrow.
- how those verifiers and auditors are sourced is the tricky bit. You would want it decentralized and random. Maybe they need to affirm within 5 seconds or it goes to the next verifier. I think to throw off possible law enforcement that would be verifiers we would need to fuzz with fake orders and the verifier never knowing if certain product reaches the threshold for shipping.
- auditors checking the verifiers' work and kicking out any that suck and maybe this is the "proof of work" metric where the best audited verifiers get more work sent to them.
I pretty much have run out of thoughts but folks tell me if this is in ballpark.
After reading everything I wrote, I'm reminded a little of the Nostr protocol which there are multiple GUIs/clients that overlay the same underlying protocol for communication. It would need that verification aspect for the escrow and more encryption on the communications than Nostr though