Openbazaar

Basics

• Aka OB1
• Marketplace
• Closed down (17-7-2021):

"On Jan. 4, the project’s leadership announced that OB1, the for-profit company that developed the OpenBazaar open-source software, would cease supporting the marketplace’s wallets, APIs, search engine and website. Since September, the project had been relying on community donations for funding, having almost exhausted the $9.25 million OB1 had raised from venture capitalists since 2015."

• From their blog (2-3-2020):

"Forked the Dark Market codebase in early 2014 and turned it into OpenBazaar. In 2015, we founded OB1 assuming it would be possible to scale the marketplace up and capture revenue, not by forcing merchants or buyers to pay mandatory rent-seeking fees but by keeping the protocol open and free and create services and software on top of that network."

• Had access to Tor, a VPN and the ability to use ZCash, the platform also relied heavily on IPFS making it much harder for global law enforcement to take down.

Usage

• From their blog (2-3-2020):

"After five years we’ve built a great community, a working decentralised marketplace, with over 120,000 people installing Haven onto their mobile devices. However, it’s been an uphill challenge of turning OB1 into a profitable business."

Team, Funding, etc.

Team

• Downsized it's team (2-3-2020).
• Hoffman, Brian; Author (now works at Kraken)
• Mougayar, William; board of directors
• Chris Pacia, dev
• Taaki, Amir; Darkmarket -> forked into OpenBazaar
• Tyler Smith; dev
• 'Sam'

Funding

• Has investment from Union Square Ventures
• Is a sponsor of Coin Center
• From Cointelegraph (28-9-2020):

"On September 25, OpenBazaar announced that their platform would likely shut down due to financial difficulties, stating that user growth and adoption had stalled. According to a tweet published on Open Bazaar’s official Twitter account, a mysterious donor has since agreed to cover the cost of the marketplace’s operations through the end of the year.

While the exact amount of funding provided was not disclosed, OpenBazaar’s donation wallets have received over $13,000 as of publication. These funds came in the form of Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and other crypto donations. With its first beta released in 2014, OpenBazaar raised US$1 million in seed funding in less than a year with the help of Andreesen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, and angel investor William Mougayar."