ActivityPub (the protocol used by the fediverse) has recently had a proposal to expand it incorporate marketplace exchanges of information. See the proposal, and a discussion thread
this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
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Looks good. While it looks more oriented towards a second-hand marketplace, its concepts can be extended to include business-to-consumer interactions as well. A mix of these systems could enhance the marketplace ecosystem's versatility and usefulness. Thanks for sharing the proposal
@Ferminho @maegul This proposal describes a very simple marketplace, and some things were intentionally left out. However, it is based on Valueflows system which can be used to describe many different economic processes, including planning, production and transportation:
https://www.valueflo.ws/introduction/core/
So developers may use object types and properties defined there if they want to build something more complicated. And social interactions can be represented as standard ActivityPub activities. I think Valueflows and ActivityPub nicely complement each other.
This is very interesting to me and I've played with this kinda idea a few weeks ago, the Activity Pub proposal you linked seems very sensible for communicating between actors but doesn't really offer much of a path to create a platform. In my view creating a platforms is the reason this should exist, because current platforms (Amazon,Ebay,Uber, AirBnB,DoorDash,Lieferheld) are mostly just engaging in rent seeking from buyers/sellers on their platforms. Rentier Capitalism
I don't believe a protocol can sufficiently challenge the current players without an underpinning organizational structure that ensures fairness and transparency to both sellers and buyers, when it comes to moderation, indexing, and categorization. Especially moderation but also hosting will have costs, and the consequences for bad moderation are likely much larger with commerce than with social media. So I would like a Coop with significant control from both sellers and buyers to provide the public facing platform which then federates with the Stores which can be self hosted by sellers (potentially as an extension to existing eCommerce Software).
Or alternatively two Coops if it's not reasonable for the sellers to host their own Stores e.g.: Uber and AirBnB, here the sellers should outright own the one providing the Stores, and own the minority in the one providing the Coop. Obviously middle grounds could also exist where e.g.: a Platform for Delivery food federates with seller servers that are hosted on a local level by Coops comprising of restaurants of a region.
I very deeply believe something like this could make our commerce much better and fairer, and while getting it of the ground might be hard, I think because the sellers make money on these Platforms it should give real incentive to develop both the tech and the legal orgs as well as advertise for them, and for the sellers to invest real money into it, or maybe agree to kick 1-2% of a purchase back to the coop.
Is the whole Amazon obsession just a North American thing? I've bought like 4 things from them in my life and nothing since about 2016 and I haven't felt at all inconvenienced. From my perspective it's not too hard to either buy from local companies, directly from foreign manufacturers, or from aliexpress if all else fails; that may just be because I'm not American though!
The reason why I choose Amazon is buying from many different stores without creating an account for each and every one. Nevermind that paying is easy.
They have a huge market share in Europe too. And it's very hard to compete with them, because in online retail the advantages given by economy of scale are brutal.
In the Netherlands there are plenty of online retailers like Coolblue who are doing well by competing on quality and customer service, despite prices being a bit higher (ironically). Next working day delivery is standard, so that isn't an issue.
Bol.com is also really successful and much like Amazon, including its problems.
I assume this is because of a first mover advantage; for a long time, Amazon was only available in the UK, Germany and France*, so that created a major disadvantage. I'm guessing this might apply to a lot of smaller European countries.
*maybe other countries too, but at any rate not in the Benelux.
To those unfamiliar with the acronym: Be – Belgium • ne – The Netherlands • lux – Luxembourg
Cryptocurrencies need to be the main payment method, such as Monero, Bitcoin, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash.
I am biased against proof of work coins personally so ETH would be my preference. Otherwise we're just contributing further to climate change.
In your opinion, why should crypto be the primary payment method for a project like this?
Because crypto is border less and censorship resistant.
Where do you people buy crypto? I made a coinbase account but those fees are insane. I'm not paying that shit.
There are many exchanges out there. Usually the KYC exchanges are cheaper in fees. I like Kraken since they got Monero.