Decentralized Markets

Daniel J. Boone djb at gci.net
Thu Mar 1 13:14:42 PST 2001


Tim May wrote:

> There really is no long-term need for an Ebay to be a "market maker."
> The future will bring more options for online auctions, for new
> pricing mechanisms.
>
> (Personally, I can see systems like Mojo recasting themselves as
> alternatives to Ebay. I don't know if Jim and his friends are
> thinking along these lines, though.)

I have been giving a lot of thought to auction protocols that would work
using signed encrypted packets distributed by a Gnutella-style peer-to-peer
network.  Tim is absolutely right -- the world needs an online marketplace
that does not have a central administrative or corporate point of attack --
or rather, the world is getting one whether it needs it or not.

So far, all of the ideas I have come up would require a relatively stable
system for recording reputation capital and associating it with nyms.  I
haven't figured out a protocol for doing THAT without it becoming a point of
attack for the decentralized market system.

It would help a lot if someone figured out a way to set up an Ebay style
feedback system for nyms that received significant usage from many different
groups of traders of a type not readily susceptible of being demonized.
Then a decentralized auction system could outsource that function without
the function becoming a  vulnerable attack point.

-- Daniel





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