[Adoption] close the Work-consume cycle

[pille]

Let's face it, what is the situation in crypto currently? If you are honest it's not used like money as it should be. Most people are just investors, hoping for the price to rise and hoarding.

The biggest problem is the need for fiat <-> crypto conversion. Let's calculate with 2.500.000 Bitcoin users today. The chances are 0.34% that you already own Bitcoin, 99.66% that you don't. So you most likely have to go and buy some with fiat first. There you have to pay a minimum fee of 1% first. Now imagine you are visiting a online shop offering Paypal and Bitcoin. You would think: 1% fee? Waiting 2-3 days for fiat -> crypto? Setting up a wallet and care about security? Well fuck it, Paypal. Next step, the shop will have to convert crypto back, again with fees. We have fiat involved here two times and all advantages of crypto are blown away, no it even got worse!

So what are the two big great things real money do? 1st: force the people to work 2nd: let them buy nice things. Now what I believe we have to do to succeed is, closing the (I call it) Work-consume cycle and eliminate fiat from it completly. We have to create the need for Dash on both sides.

#1 Consume

When people visit a online shop and see many payment methods they have to think: "Dash is the only one, the best". They have to get offered a discount of their purchase or someting. Merchants should forward their fee savings compared to credit card, payment processors etc, to the customer. Of course merchants have to get easy integration tools and yes, deter them from converting back to fiat is a problem (no idea at the moment).

#2 Work

Workers have to feel the need for Dash so bad, that they want to get paid in Dash (or at least a part of their wage). Easiest to start here is the internet too. Why don't we get into a project like freelancer? Or create our own platform? Maybe even on top of the masternode network?

Later then port all that into the real world.

That are the kind of projects that should get funded with our blockchain budget system imho.

- Dash web shop plugins
- freelancer like platform
- usability, security
- ...

Hope this can lead into some brainstorming. What projects could be helpful?

 

[TanteStefana]

I agree pille, but I think the only way to do this is with a marketplace and decentralized exchange. With a marketplace, people can sell their cryptos for fiat, at the exchange, people can buy whatever crypto they want for other crypto. It could always rout through Bitcoin even, so that individual markets don't have to be created, and it becomes one big market.

Anyway, I know Evan doesn't really want these things in the protocol level of Dash, but instead wants to build them into the API. I don't know how that could work though, but what I want to see is a marketplace run on top of a node system that charges a small fee for acting as a storage of data and server of, I would think, a modified Open Bazaar. I really honestly think that if we create a decentralized "ebay" only even easier to use, because there won't be a ton of stupid fees for everything, and make it so that people can buy and sell without the 15% fee they're charged (ebay+paypal) that we will get a lot of ordinary people coming to cryptos/Dash.

All we need to do is modify Open Bazaar so that clients don't have to run the servers, but instead they're run on special nodes. The nodes would get paid a tiny, something like 1% fee, for each transaction. The fee would be distributed just like in the Masternode network.

Thus, people with something to sell can earn crypto (presumably Dash preferred) which will spread the user base. I wish I understood what the API will allow a developer to do. Because it seems to me that one couldn't do this on MNs unless it's in the protocol level. I hope I'm wrong though. Same with a decentralized exchange.

If we can make this happen so that it's super easy for a normal non-techie person to use, then we could steel a lot of customers from Ebay and Paypal. Spreading the user base like wildfire.

This is really the only way I can see us breaking that barrier. Little Ebay stores are so sick and tired of paying 15%, and the competition is harsh. I'm positive that they will at least consider and many will try our services, if we build it, they will come.

 

[pille]

We have this ebay alternative with ZERO fees here in germany https://www.hood.de/ . They are online since 15 years but far from being as popular as ebay, instead they are prefered by scammers. I assume low fees alone wont help.

 

[TanteStefana]

Why do you think that is? Has it got a confusing interface? What do they do to make money (where are the charges?) Is it in Advertisement? And why are the scammers attracted to this site?

Any thoughts you have would be invaluable.

 

[pille]

It is only free for private members, merchants pay 1-6%. Also as a private member you can pay for highlight and push your insertion.

Actually the site is bigger than I tought, 7mio members 4mio offers per day. But still, you sell much faster on ebay and realize higher prices, especially for less popular products. Interface is ok for me. The big difference I think is, how identity is checked on register. On this site they may ask you for a ID copy (fakeable), when you try to sell expensive stuff. Thats all. Ebay instead checks you via 'postident', they verify your address and ID on a local post office.

If you are a buyer, advance payment is common. And if you come across a scammer, they can't do much for you, you are doomed. People have trust in the brand ebay and valuate its fraud protection. Also it simply has the most users, this is hard to change. Maybe the market in US is different.

The peoples laziness is our challange.

 

[TanteStefana]

Here is a great thread where that question was asked:
http://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/letters/blog.pl?/pl/2012/5/1337893361.html
Excerpts:

Sellers can try all the venues they want but until buyers follow those sellers, multichannel listing is little more than an exercise in creating listings.

You forgot to mention ''advertising''. (But apparently, the alt-sites have forgotten all about it too.) A couple of them have reached plateau and just maintained that one level... something that advertising would likely help them to overcome and reach the next level.

My Bonanza account is now idle. I had results that were similar to Ric's experiences elsewhere. I was lucky if I got one sale every other month. The ''eyes'' just weren't there. Even though it was easy to list... I was only successful when I'd constantly babysit the store (and that was time that was better spent babysitting my OWN web site. And with better results, too.)


I do more buying than selling these days but have wondered why after all the complaining sellers don't move. The buyers will follow if the sellers will move in larger numbers. Instead they just dribble out a few at a time.

Yes, advertising would help but ultimately the buyers go where the most sellers are and until those sellers move, the buyers will stay with ebay.

I can tell you why this eBay seller hasn't left eBay completely even though I have found an alternative venue.
1. The alt venue is my own website.
2. I use eBay simply to drive traffic to it (repeat customers)
3. It is still profitable.

eBay is poised to throw everyone who doesn't sell cheap crapola from China out so people are looking for some place else. Right now they seem to be fragmented all over. If one of the alternatives could get their act together, they could pull in all of those fleeing and those who have fled and have another great shopping venue.
_____________________________________________________________________________

So it seems to me that what we need is:

Long term persistence
Advertisement (for customer's things as well as our service)
Great search engine for pertinent results
Allow sellers to drive customers to their own website openly. (we can't stop it easily anyway)
Finally, how does ebay get items to show up in google results all the time? We would need to do that as well.

Advantages we have:

After it's built, we have an enthusiastic bunch of people that will run the servers even without payment, probably nearly forever, for free. so no overhead after it's built
Best coders out there, I'm sure they can figure out a great search engine and how to get exposure on google
If this is built with Dash in mind, we may convince the Dash community to allow us an advertisement budget.
If the site is served up via HTML, easy access to the public, it will have a huge advantage over Open Bazaar

 

[GrandMasterDash]

There is, actually, a Marketplace forum on here.. but it's not very busy. The admins should move the link higher up the page and they should give it a subdomain on dash.org. Anyway, what hope is there if we don't even use our own Marketplace!

But yeah, I agree, we should concentrate on creating a self-sustaining ecosystem. Oh, and btw, forget the percentage thing.. one of the main pillars of crypto is it's near-flat fee structure, so let's try to keep that ethos. I much prefer tiered pricing, or charges by the number of transactions instead of the value of transactions.