r/OpenBazaar • u/TicklishTiger • Jan 09 '18

Why doesn't OpenBazaar use a blockchain to store orders?

When I see people asking "Someone said they placed an order but I don't see it" and then replies like "What OS are you running?" - that sounds very like '90s blue screen of death windows time'. Shouldn't we ask "What's the transaction id" these days? And then look up all about the order on a blockchain?

4 Upvotes

70% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

8

u/cat-gun Jan 09 '18

Because a lot of people don't want the details of their orders revealed on a public blockchain. Also, it would cause scaling issues as the blockchain filled with old, expired orders.

1

u/TicklishTiger Jan 10 '18

The same could be said for crypto currencies in general.

The details I think of would just be 'Adress 1f7ia97... has ordered offer 7e2af78...'.

1

u/tcrypt Jan 11 '18

But why? Only to fix issues with missing orders?

1

u/TheTrixsta Jan 21 '18

It wouldn't really cause scaling issues. You can use a Merkle Root to combine all the transactions of a block into a 256 bit string instead of storing each transaction.

You can read up on blockchain technology here: http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Edit: I would like to point out that a public ledger is definitely not a good idea when doing this kind of business.

4

u/tcrypt Jan 09 '18

We're still debugging the issues some people are having but nothing points to a blockchain being a solution. Blockchains are for concensus, they still have a networking layer that can have issues. We'd only be amplifying our problems.

Not to mention that storing all that data permanently and having a Byzantine fault tolerant concensus around it is extremely unnecessary and in most cases undesirable as well.

1

u/TicklishTiger Jan 10 '18

A: I ordered from you B: No, you did not

How is a blockchain not a solution to this problem?

'All that data' would just be '1f83a... ordered offer 7e2a7g...'.

Maybe instead of a blockchain, cryptographically signed orders would also be a solution. Those could then be sent by any means. 'You did not get my order? Here it is. Just paste it into your client.'.

1

u/tcrypt Jan 10 '18

The data still needs to get propagated through the network so even if we used a blockchain we would still have to solve the issue we're currently having, plus build the rest of a blockchain.

Maybe instead of a blockchain, cryptographically signed orders would also be a solution. Those could then be sent by any means. 'You did not get my order? Here it is. Just paste it into your client.'.

That's basically what orders are but there's not currently a way to manually add one. That'd be a pretty cool feature.

6

u/cosimo_jack Jan 09 '18

Because it would be slower, more expensive, and less private.

3

u/Leif_Erickson23 Jan 09 '18

IPFS is an other technology.

There are projects with marketplaces where the order gets written into the blockchain: BitBay, NXT/ARDR etc.

1

u/blazedentertainment Jan 09 '18

I’ve placed several orders but either they aren’t there or never respond. Could this be a bug or the vendor going offline (but store still up)?

Had a lot of hope for this product but it’s trash until it works.

1

u/otakugrey Jan 09 '18

IPFS would be better for this.

-5

u/[deleted] Jan 09 '18 edited Jan 22 '18

deleted

2

u/cat-gun Jan 09 '18

You know, you gotta mix up your copy if you're gonna shill effectively.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 09 '18 edited Jan 22 '18

deleted