[Bitcoin-development] [ANN] METAmarket - Trustless Federated Marketplaces

["Marc D. Wood" <metamarc@metamarket.biz>]

METAmarket: Trustless Federated Marketplaces
>>> http://metamarket.biz <<<

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Introduction

METAmarket is an open source protocol and proof-of-concept reference
client specifying a trustless federated marketplace which uses Bitcoin as
a universal currency and Bitmessage as a P2P communication network.
Time-locked refund transactions ensure that incentives are aligned toward
completing the trade without the need for trusted third parties. Systemic
vulnerabilities such as transaction malleability are mitigated through the
use of a federated reputation model. This document is a non-technical
overview of how the METAmarket client and protocol work. For more
technical details, see the protocol specification.

Motivation

Overly centralized marketplaces and payment services extract high fees,
impose and abuse excessive control and remove any hope of privacy from
users. As more commerce moves online, many consumers may find their
lifetime history of purchases (including books, personal items and
location details) for sale to advertisers, employers, curious neighbors,
stalkers, political opponents and government agencies. An ideal system
would be one of secure private transactions directly between buyer and
seller without middle men collecting data or adding fees. Such systems are
now feasible by combining recently developed technologies for anonymous
decentralized payment and messaging systems.

Client

To use the marketplaces, a client application which implements the
METAmarket protocol is required. The client is used to post, browse and
execute trades. It also requires a Bitcoin Core wallet to handle payments
and refunds. A working client is available at:

http://github.com/metamarcdw/metamarket