Within hours of online marketplace OpenBazaar’s launch earlier this year, it was host to its first stores offering illegal merchandise. But, it turns out that early precedent was not a harbinger of things to come at the distributed e-commerce platform, supported by VC-backed software startup OB1, which boasts investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures. The next phase of the open-source, distributed market, dubbed OpenBazaar 2.0, will be aimed at meeting mainstream demand.
From a new user interface making it easier for large companies to sell at scale, to a native bitcoin wallet aimed at simplifying the buying process, the new features are designed to reach the widest audience possible and expected to be rolled out over the coming months.
One of the more than 300 vendors online at any given moment is Brian Hoffman, who in addition to helping manage the upgrades made by various members of the open-source community, runs OB1’s own shop that sells a range of OpenBazaar swag.
Hoffman estimates that of 7,000 items for sale at any given time, only about 200 are "illicit" and that global adoption is picking up pace.
He told CoinDesk: "The really neat thing we’ve seen beyond the enthusiasm is the mix between domestic and international users. While the primary users are certainly in the US, we ship products all over the world." Identifying users
While the identity of marketplace owners and their locations are not tracked by OB1, some information about users is obtainable with a bit of sleuthing from sites like Duosear.ch and BazaarBay.
So far, the OpenBazaar software has been downloaded in 190 countries and about 20,000 items have been listed.
Users tend to be small- and medium-size merchant with a "strong tilt" toward physical goods, which surprised Hoffman, who in addition to having the title of lead developer of the […]
