OpenBazaar Decentralized Marketplace Could Close Soon

OpenBazaar, the decentralized marketplace could close soon unless the community donates $100,000 as we are reading more in the latest crypto news.

The most popular decentralized marketplace OpenBazaar has no choice but to shut down unless the community donates money until Friday. One of the longest-running decentralized marketplaces has an issue with the lack of user growth but it said they will continue to operate if the community makes donations.

Someone donated 2.5 ETH last night to @openbazaar, wow. pic.twitter.com/tL3Z5Lgfju

— OpenBazaar (@openbazaar) September 26, 2020

OpenBazaar said on Friday that they will shut down unless they receive financial support. According to the announcement, the services of the platform, the seed nods, API wallet, exchange rate API, and more, will be shutting down unless donations are made. A representative from the company said:

“We don’t have a solid target at the moment but a soft one for us is 100k to keep it up for the next year.”

The marketplace said that they have no choice but to shut down the services because of a lack of level of user growth and adoption. The platform launched in 2014 and became one of the longest-running decentralized marketplaces. These kinds of marketplaces are trustless networks that allow people to buy and sell goods online. They don’t have a single entity controlling them so anyone can help run their networks. Since the launch, more than $44 million in crypto was sent over the platform to purchase anything from laptops, games, and even foods.

This is nothing compared to the darknet markets which combined trade anywhere from $5 to $15 million per day according to the analysis of 2019 data by Chainalysis. The company said that it does not cater to illicit commerce via various prescription medications such as oxycontin and tramadol which are illegal to purchase online in some countries but available on other marketplaces. OpenBazaar said that its messaging and wallet app Haven will also stop working. Instructions on how the users will release the funds will be published in the next few days. The search engine and BlackBook indexer code will be made open-source for those that could want to run the infrastructure privately.

The marketplace also added that there was still hope to save the services:

 “There is only one possibility for OpenBazaar and Haven to continue, and cancel the shutdown: community support.”