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

On 02/14/2013 11:45 AM, Kumar McMillan wrote:
> Not sure if this came up on the list already: 
> https://www.balancedpayments.com/

I don't think it's hit the list yet, thanks for the link Kumar. :)

I had a chat with the Balanced guys a few weeks ago, they were really
nice and friendly. I asked that they join this group if they'd like,
don't know if that ever happened.

We found out about them through GitTip. GitTip uses Balanced to process
payments and did a fantastic job helping Chad Whitacre out when he had
fraudulent transactions on his service:

http://blog.gittip.com/post/35057426257/stolen-money-on-gittip-part-1

It's a really interesting fraud incident partly because it was
documented and put up publicly. Many fraud incidents are never reported
to the public, so that blog post provides really great insight into what
happened. Kudos to Chad and Balanced for handling the incident so well.

> This isn't decentralized by any means but the concept is it enables 
> you to build a marketplace where you sell goods on behalf of other 
> merchants. This is an important use case in web payments because it 
> provides an incentive to the marketplace by way of transaction fees.

Yep, totally agree, which is why this was one of the first use cases we
focused on for PaySwarm (technically, it started back in 2006 as a part
of the work on Bitmunk's legal peer-to-peer music resale feature):

http://payswarm.com/specs/ED/use-cases/2011-10-25/#independent-distribution-and-pricing

The PaySwarm marketplace solution is decentralized. Here's a rough
outline of how it works. Let's assume that the marketplace is a Web App
Store:

The software developer creates a PaySwarm Asset that describes the item
that they're selling (name of the app, who created it, images,
description, etc.). They add sale restrictions to the asset: the license
the app is available under as well as required price (or required
minimum and maximum price), the validity of the offer period, and the
deposit location for the funds upon purchase of the Asset. The Asset is
digitally signed and placed somewhere on the Web (or physical media).

The Web App Store retrieves the asset and creates a listing for the
asset, ensuring to add the required payees for the asset and ensuring
that the prices charged and licenses used with the asset follow the
requirements outlined by the Asset owner. The Web App Store adds their
fee to the Listing. The Listing is digitally signed and placed on the Web.

A customer then comes by and clicks the "Buy" button, a purchase request
(containing the Asset and Listing) is sent to the customer's PaySwarm
Authority. They are shown the purchase details and agree to buy the app.
The digital receipt is sent back to the Web App store, which can then
initiate the download and install of the app.

Note that close to 80% of this is currently implemented in the current
release of PaySwarm. The only thing missing is the ability to create
sale restrictions on the Asset and the checks for the PA to ensure that
the sale restrictions are being honored.

Kumar, is this the sort of thing you were thinking about wrt.
decentralized App Stores?

-- 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 Saturday, 2 March 2013 17:21:09 UTC