Re: Balanced - a system on which to build a marketplace

On 03/02/2013 05:38 PM, Kumar McMillan wrote:
>> Kumar, is this the sort of thing you were thinking about wrt. 
>> decentralized App Stores?
> 
> Yeah, pretty much. It seems like the owner of the asset should enter
>  explicitly into a relationship with the App Store otherwise they may
>  not be happy that all these third parties can add extra fees to 
> their assets. I guess that's what you mean by creating sale 
> restrictions?

Yep, exactly. Asset sale restrictions include:

* Specifying that only certain app stores can re-sell your app.
* Specifying that anybody can re-sell your app.
* Specifying a minimum or maximum price that the customer should pay
  for your app (to make sure a re-seller isn't going to gouge their
  customers using your app).
* Specifying that a certain percentage of the sale should go to you,
  or a certain flat amount should go to you (you don't care what the
  app store charges as long as you get your cut).

This approach ensures that the Asset provider (the person that built the
app) is in control of the terms of sale for their application while
allowing the app store to have the flexibility to offer sales, easily
understandable pricing, or things like group-buy offers.

The underlying principle behind the way PaySwarm models things for sale
is to ensure that everyone involved in the sale process has the power to
negotiate availability and pricing w/o having to be involved with every
store that might sell a particular product. This is accomplished through
restrictions placed on the asset and listing as well as allowing the
buyer to see where their money is going so that they may decline to buy
the item if the deal isn't agreeable to them.

> Also, I think there will be legitimate cases where someone wants to 
> sell something through a marketplace but doesn't know how and doesn't
> care. In the app store example, let's say a developer wants to sell
> an app through Web Store Foo but the developer doesn't want to do all
> the asset signing / crypto, etc. Balanced fills this need nicely: all
> you have to do is securely enter your bank account details, list your
> goods through the marketplace, and you get paid. It should be that
> easy. Maybe offering third party asset management tools is the way to
> solve this.

This is already possible as it's one of the most basic PaySwarm use
cases. The developer would just pick their app store, fill out a
profile, say how much they want to get paid, upload their app and be
done with it. The app store would create the asset and the listing,
honoring the developers price, and the buyer could just come along using
whatever PaySwarm Authority they have and purchase the app.

There are a number of possibilities in-between these two use cases as well:

1. The PaySwarm Authority could vouch for the Asset and sign it
   directly for the developer and list it on the PA.
2. The PaySwarm Authority could provide an Asset listing service on
   behalf of the app developer. Something like, but fancier than,
   http://listings.dev.payswarm.com/ .
   The developer would create an automated script to upload the
   latest pricing info on a weekly basis.
3. The app developer could use a 3rd party site that allows them
   to create an "App bundle" for the app store, which would also
   include a re-listing service.

All of these approaches are valid in PaySwarm.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Aaron Swartz, PaySwarm, and Academic Journals
http://manu.sporny.org/2013/payswarm-journals/

Received on Sunday, 3 March 2013 01:57:41 UTC