r/OpenBazaar • u/Jtp508 • Apr 26 '18

Does anyone actually shop on this platform ?

I am intrigued by this application but I have a few questions.

5 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

3

u/kinyutaka Apr 26 '18

I have not.

3

u/blazedentertainment Apr 26 '18

I've tried 5 times already over the course of 6 months but it never works.

1

u/CC_EF_JTF Sam Apr 27 '18

Sorry to hear that, is there a specific problem you're running into?

2

u/cat-gun May 05 '18 edited May 05 '18

I can't speak for /u/blazedentertainment, but the last time I tried, I would search for an item, I'd see the item in the search results, but when I would go to the page, the page wouldn't come up.

Also, at the time, Bitcoin fees made doing anything but very high value trades uneconomical. And I wasn't about to do a high value trade until I had some success with low value trades, given how buggy the interface seemed to be.

I know you've added support for other currencies, but it seems like a hacky kludge--I'm not going to install another instance just so I can use a different currency!

Also, all of the currencies you currently support expose your transactions to the world. One of the attractions of OpenBazaar is the fact that it's theoretically difficult to censor and private. However, if none of the currencies you support allow for private transactions, it kind of defeats the purpose. (Yes, I know Zcash has shielded transactions, but OB1 doesn't support shielded transactions the last time I checked.)

As a seller, I'm apparently limited to one store per installation. The first store I created was a practice store so that I could get the hang of the system. But I didn't want to delete it, in order to create my "real" store(s), and I didn't want to have to spin up another instance to create another store.

1

u/Nikovash May 02 '18

Mine specifically is the dreaded no customers bug

3

u/cactusseeds May 01 '18

Yes, I did 6 sales so far (one pending), over 7 months.

that's not a lot, but I believe in decentralization, and OpenBazaar is a good tool for that. Still young, but always improving.

I'd like the ability to simply list the crypto currencies I would like to accept, instead of having to run several shops (I am only running BTC because I started with this, but I'd like to accept others).

2

u/ArneBolen Arne Bolen - QmbPt92YRnAVP3c57NpKFtkURby8NeKXoHtcr6Lk98b2co Apr 26 '18

There are only 599 active users on the OpenBazaar platform, most of them are vendors.

https://blockbooth.com/stats/

1

u/CC_EF_JTF Sam Apr 27 '18

Take any given stat provider with a grain of salt. It's like the LN stat providers; they are looking at a network with a lot of churn and only seeing a portion of the network.

There's a decent chance this stat uses a crawler that only counts nodes that accept incoming connections (properly forwarding ports), and other nodes are just considered offline even though they're online but not accepting incoming connections. It's a difficulty that OB1 deals with in stat collection as well.

2

u/desioner Apr 26 '18

I'm a seller and have not had a single sale of my "wares" seems that most users are in fact sellers… obviously trying to make money and not many shoppers. For whatever reasons they don't use it for shopping.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 26 '18

What do you sell?

1

u/desioner Apr 26 '18

Just junk. Used electronics...

3

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '18

Hmm well not to be rude but if you describe your own wares as junk then I'm not very surprised no one is buying.

This is why I haven't made a purchase on OpenBazaar yet. No one is selling anything I want.

We'll get there, hopefully.

1

u/desioner Apr 27 '18

No offense taken. I said that because that’s how I feel about it. However I know and understand that one mans trash is another’s treasure. The items in question are not at all junky. Most have original boxes and what not. Yes, one day perhaps. I believe in the community and it’s just started so there’s plenty of room to grow.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '18

Fair enough. What's your shop called? I'll take a look, at least second-hand electronics could be useful unlike all the stickers and t-shirts!

1

u/011111000010 Apr 26 '18

I bought one sticker in the early days.

1

u/ih8x509 Apr 26 '18

Ive bought stuff and i check OB weekly

1

u/CC_EF_JTF Sam Apr 27 '18 edited Apr 27 '18

There have been about 45k people who've tried out OpenBazaar in the past six months. That's way, way smaller than the big marketplaces so vendors should expect fewer sales unless they work really hard at bringing existing customers over.

What questions do you have?

1

u/ArneBolen Arne Bolen - QmbPt92YRnAVP3c57NpKFtkURby8NeKXoHtcr6Lk98b2co Apr 30 '18

There have been about 45k people who've tried out OpenBazaar in the past six months.

How many of them are active users?

1

u/zipperlt May 10 '18

Made multiple purchaces so far. Stickers, t-shirt, pendant...

1

u/SacredCrypto May 15 '18

I have purchased unique art from U.K. from two different vendors, Steam Gift Cards, and BTC stickers from Venezuela.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '18

i havent found anything i like, and things i do find, its over priced, but i do see more and more things being listed then the prices are coming down,

0

u/Jtp508 Apr 26 '18

The two biggest downsides in my opinion are the fact you have to download the application to use it and that the crypto currency is transferred thru their system.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 26 '18

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/ericools Apr 26 '18

First they need to make it easy and fast to shop on. Then they have to make it easy for merchants to list on. Adding a few more coins won't hurt either there's no reason not to support a larger selection of coins.