We need a decentralized Amazon.

Amazon has increasingly moved to abusing sellers with advertising costs. I spent a year and a half trying to cater to the algorithm and build a brand. I kept my costs down by importing raw materials direct, building packaging and labeling the product myself. I have trademarks and have done everything right. Reviewing my year it’s costing me $1 in ad spend to generate $1.20 in gross sales. In addition they charge 15% commission, storage fees, FBA fees based on item weight size and category and the seller is responsible for returns and damaged/lost products.

My material costs are 25% of the sales price. Add it all up and I’m selling at a significant loss. I would have stopped earlier but I built significant inventory to support the additional volume and there was no other sales channel for me to move the volume. It would have been cheaper to throw it all away, but I reasoned that with time and reviews it might start to improve. I have over 50 5 ⭐️ reviews and haven’t seen any boost. I answer every customer question and follow best practices on the platform.

Amazon is designed to extract money from entrepreneurs. If we build a decentralized version we can pass the savings to customers and improve the customer experience. Vendors would flock to it but it would be difficult to compete at scale without a “hook”. Ideas?

Reminded by someone of the Stirlingov case, here's some high level thoughts to bear in mind:

1. Bitcoin is intrinsically fungible.

2. Bitcoin's fungibility in practice is really bad.

3. Because of 1, "chain forensics" don't give you a perfect view of a user's activity. The idea of prosecuting someone based mostly on chain surveillance, and not other evidence is, at best, *astoundingly* unrealistic and dubious.

4. Because of 2, chain surveillance can provide very useful clues to an attacker (including law enforcement, but thieves etc. etc. too), so for the ordinary user, there is some benefit in using privacy enhancing technology, but don't kid yourself, it will never be perfect.

For a better privacy model, focus more on off-chain, use the chain as your security anchor, not your everyday wallet. And there are still no perfect answers.