Blockchains have given us endless ways to issue, derivatize and trade assets, while the everyday commerce people actually live on still runs through platforms that take 20-30% and decide who gets to participate. My research fellowship at the Ethereum Foundation asked why that is, and what it would take for Ethereum to power real marketplaces for real goods and services.
The DeCom series
I published a three-part series setting out the argument.
Ethereum Bazaar
We built Ethereum Bazaar as a proof of concept: a marketplace organized by place, where anyone can draw a location on a map and anyone with a wallet can post a listing inside it, priced in any token or in nothing at all. There is no operator in between, no fee, and nobody to take a listing down.
We ran it at Edge City Patagonia, the pop-up city in San Martín de los Andes.
Findings
The fellowship ended with an account of the infrastructure decentralized commerce still needs, and where Ethereum is closest to providing it.
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