It seems that if there was a DNM that was decentralized:
It could remove the possibility of exit scams on your money
It could encourage/fund the development of a really good market that funds the features most requested by users
It could increase trust in the market and encourage good behavior by users and vendors, due to long-term relationships rather than short term relationships due to possibility of market being taken down
I heard somewhere that it should be possible like so:
Crypto token to incentivize people all around the world to host "nodes" for the marketplace
A decentralized database (i.e. blockchain) to store all the transactions, vendors, etc
The creator of the software could include their own bitcoin/ethereum address and take some % of all transactions, without even having to host the marketplace
Some % of the transactions would be distributed back to people who host instances, and perhaps really good vendors too (in the form of tokens, perhaps, or just direct BTC/ZeroCash/Monero payments), perhaps also to people who refer/sign up users and vendors
Could enforce good behaviors, like no plain text entry possible, no on-site wallet (instead all done as multi-sig transactions with fees that are then programmatically split up either directly, or indirectly via a token)
It would probably be possible to raise $1mm+ via an ICO to fund development, too.
Could have an open feature prioritization thing / roadmap, and users and/or token holders could vote on features
Cons:
Takes time to develop
Need to get vendors and users, otherwise it's useless (a token distributed to early users and vendors could be an interesting way to incentivize user/vendor acquisition, where the token pays dividends of a % of the market fees - i.e. fees are split between the original development team, future anonymous open source contributors, people who referred vendors, people who referred users, great vendors who are exclusive to the marketplace, people who host "nodes", etc)
Pros:
- Less/no exit scam possibility (code could/should be open source)
Why isn't a decentralized DNM the most popular DNM currently?
What do you think of the above notes? It's an interesting thought experiment.
Is there a successful decentralized market out there right now? OpenBazaar still hasnt taken off. Tramalfadore seems to have faded along with Ethrow. Which, maybe is a good thing since Ether seems to be slim on the security end.
I would be down with some crowd funding via Monero if someone competent could develop a decetralized, reliable, secure and stable market. But anyone that could competently do that, has a better paying and legit job already.