Will Open Bazaar Succeed Where Silk Road Failed?

A new company looks to erase the limits on what can be bought and sold online.

- Sean W. Malone

OpenBazaar—a blockchain-based, fully decentralized online market— makes it possible to sell anything to anyone, anywhere in the word, for free.

We know what you’re probably thinking: Hasn’t that been tried before, and didn’t it land Ross Ulbricht in prison for life without the possibility of parole? But the team at OB1, the company that’s developing the OpenBazaar network, is quick to point out that their product doesn’t have the vulnerabilities of Silk Road, the online marketplace Ulbricht ran that got him busted for money laundering and conspiracy to traffic drugs.

For one thing, OpenBazaar is not a website—it’s a peer-to-peer network that runs on open-source software that users download and install on their computers, similar to a BitTorrent client. The software connects people to a network where they can trade with other users without a middleman taking a cut.