Right now, online commerce means using centralized services. eBay, Amazon, and other big companies have restrictive policies and charge fees for listing and selling goods. They only accept forms of payment that cost both buyers and sellers money, such as credit cards or PayPal. They require personal information, which can lead to it being stolen or even sold to others. Buyers and sellers aren’t always free to exchange goods and services with each other, as companies restrict entire categories of trade.

OpenBazaar is a different approach to online commerce. It puts the power back in the users’ hands. Instead of buyers and sellers going through a centralized service, OpenBazaar connects them directly. Because there is no one in the middle of your transactions there are no fees, no restrictions, no accounts to create, and you only reveal the personal information that you choose.

Timeline

OpenBazaar is currently in beta. If you want to keep up to date on announcements and releases, please subscribe to our subreddit.

We are looking for beta testers, so if you’re interested please contact project@openbazaar.org.

Submit bug reports and suggestions for improvement to our Github repositories, either server or client.

Feel free to drop into our Slack room. We’re happy to help you get a node running or answer your questions.

Developers can visit our developer resource page. Obviously any code submitted to the project is much appreciated!

You can also donate Bitcoin to this address to help us pay for seed servers, the website, and other projects costs like conferences.

Let’s make trade free, together.