What recourse would a buyer have if they pay, and then never receive an item? If your answer to that is, "smart contract wouldn't release funds until they verify they've received item", then what recourse would a seller have if they send product, but the user never completes the transaction and verifies that they received the product?

This isn't a pithy response, I'm genuinely curious how this kind of thing could be worked around. Independent third party mediator that can contact both parties to figure out what happened (perhaps incentivized with a % of the smart contract's value?)

There is a concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, where both the buyer and seller put 1.5x the value into a special 2-of-2 multisig address (I'm using Bitcoin as an example).

Then, two transactions are created (but not yet signed); 1 that pays the seller their share and returns the remaining deposit to the buyer, and one that is the other way around (refund).

When the item is shipped / received, and everything is good, both parties sign the transaction to unlock the funds. If either side attempts to scam the other, they are out 1.5x the price of the object. It becomes both party's interest to ensure that conflicts can be resolved so the deposits can be unlocked.

In other words, it is escrow without the 3rd party.

There is more information here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/215yn2/mad_ransom_...

> Independent third party mediator that can contact both parties to figure out what happened (perhaps incentivized with a % of the smart contract's value?)

Yes, I certainly see that as an option.

And perhaps a system like this needs more types of "special actors", e.g. for supporting alternative payment methods.

Great idea. And those independent thirdy-party mediators could even offer other services, like reviews. And you could pay through them. They could even have their own website. They could call it Amazon or something.

This is similar to what Jet's original vision was. Since the shipping cost is baked into the price of items sold online, Jet would have you buy from local retailers who could bundle the items they sold you, allowing the consumer to save money since the shipping costs were cheaper.

Great idea in theory, not sure how it's working out in practice. I think Jet had trouble establishing a brand - it was acquired in September 2016 by Wal-Mart.

Sounds like OpenBazaar https://www.openbazaar.org

Isn't that a little like ebay or aliexpress?

Those are companies. This is about a federated/decentralized approach.

Amazon uses a lot of third-party sellers, so in a way Amazon is more like EBay.

Large part of this experience comes from having central management that forces all parts to follow same standards, and from investing money into many things that are not essential for smaller stores, but overall contribute to the experience. I believe some sort of shopping platform could be created, but most likely independent stores would need to feel even more pressure to subject itself to stricter rules and more importantly, to understand that better technology equals more sales (or any at all) and that they have to cooperate to continue to exist.

It took decades for technology mature enough to make it truly easy for even a mom & pop shop, an individual creator, or a service provider to set up shop, accept payments, fulfill and deliver orders on the web.

A lot of the new technology that could potentially become the backbone of the proverbial New Internet is still in its infancy. I will be probably evolve quicker than the first few waves but at the moment it still feels like nerdy tools built by nerds for other nerds.

Not when >80% of independent shops sell same Chinese crap.

Doesn't this also describe amazon?

So? Then the market will adjust. Seems a net win for customer and seller.

What does blockchain add to this?

You can prove that your reviewer is the same person as the person who paid with blockchain. I'm just not sure how to do so if the customer pays with traditional means.

That has an interesting side effect. If someone writes enough bad reviews, will people stop selling to them? We saw VE electronics refuse to sell anything else to anyone who gave them a bad review on any product. Would vendors band together on this?

I suppose one could just create a different wallet and use that one.

Investor interest.

Ensuring that you can only place a review for an item if you have purchased the item.

Or similarly for placing a review about a shop.

Sounds like the days when you bought your firewood from firefuel.com, your bicycle from speedbybikes.com and your coats from warmjackets.com

It turns out people didn't trust a large number of separate sellers without a central organisation to set rules, offer refunds and make a consistent shopping experience.

Meanwhile, there are lots of reports about counterfeits on Amazon. And can we really trust their review system?

So, basically eBay with buzzwords?

By the way, similar tech could be used for the gig economy, e.g. ride-sharing services and food-delivery services.

What you describe sounds like Open Bazaar.