With an announcement today, decentralized peer-to-peer marketplace OpenBazaar is open for business, in its first full version released and available for downloads.
It has been nearly two years since initial chatter arose, with word of a decentralized marketplace being developed in time for a public beta in 2014. In the following years, the decentralized, unregulated and open-source marketplace went through multiple betas.
Now, OpenBazaar sees its first full version launched today in a public release, moving beyond the beta phase. While the release isn’t feature-packed to fully satisfy bitcoin users, it will still bring about plenty of cheer among the crypto- and bitcoin-community, as a project that has come to be fully realized after over 18 months in early development.
With its release, Brian Hoffman, project lead behind the development of the marketplace stated: Trade was meant to be free. This idea inspired us to spend the last two years building OpenBazaar. Starting today, anyone in the world with access to an internet connection can use Bitcoin and OpenBazaar to exchange goods and services freely. We can’t wait to see how people will use this tool. OpenBazaar, a fork of DarkMarket, sought to be the eBay for bitcoiners, only decentralized and cutting out the need for a middleman. With no centralized authority exerting control, users do not need to pay for any fees and engage in trade directly with each other.
The press release adds: OpenBazaar is permissionless trade. There are also no central authorities that act as gatekeepers and restrict trade. OpenBazaar core-developers received a round of funding in 2015 from Union Square Ventures, Andreessen-Horowitz and angel investor William Mougayar. This helped the developers create a company called ‘OB1’ to enable full-time development of the marketplace protocol and its software.
Furthermore, users and bitcoin enthusiasts can expect to see a steady development […]
