Forgotsudo monero marketplace

Introduction

Hello, we are the Onionr team from VoidNetwork LLC and we would like to propose funding for the development of the Onionr marketplace.

Onionr, started by Kevin Forman in 2017, is an experimental decentralized messaging network/platform similar in design to Bitmessage that is built to provide high security and privacy. Through the use of Dandelion++ and node aging, the user’s privacy is preserved. It is also flexible, in that it can run over I2P, Tor, LAN multicast, and sneakernet, with extensibility for more transports and application plugins.

What

The goal of this CCS is to continue the funding that is needed to build out a P2P Monero marketplace.

The purpose of the Onionr marketplace is to allow for a censorship resistant, private, and secure way to use your Monero. There are many websites that try to fill this role but are inherently centralized and prone to an assortment of attacks, puting the users' privacy and security at risk. The Monero community doesn’t have a decentralized P2P marketplace and that is what we want to achieve here. In the age of market manipulation and regulations, it is necessary to push for a remedy to this issue. No central authority controls the Onionr network or marketplace. Onionr achieves this goal by returning the free market to those using XMR as a true currency/means of exchange.

Technical overview

The Onionr marketplace will work without any centralized servers, relying on epidemic propagation to advertise encrypted storefronts, product listings, and most operations. Stores will be private by default, but can be made publicy discoverable via a searchable index. Using a web of trust system, users can review stores and products. Monero wallet RPC integration will be used to process payments for orders on the merchant end. All messages and orders between customers and merchants are end to end encrypted. Optionally, merchants can open ephemeral onion service tunnels to permit relatively low latency access to their stores.

Why does Monero need this?

I believe Murray Rothbard said it best, “freedom can run a monetary system as superbly as it runs the rest of the economy.”, “There is nothing special about money that requires extensive governmental dictation. Here, too, free men will best and most smoothly supply all their economic wants.”

The Onionr team believes that this marketplace will provide economic freedom, liquidity, and strengthen the Monero-centric economy. We want to encourage the exchange of Monero for goods and services and this is a necessity for Monero to thrive in an ever increasingly authoritarian world. As regulations surrounding privacy and, more specifically, private cryptocurrencies become more and more detrimental, there needs to be a haven for true P2P communications and transactions. Onionr is the solution to this problem.

A bit of history

The original plan set out was that I (ForgotSudo) would fund the development of Onionr. This involved firstly implementing VDFs and the Dandelion++ protocol, and then start on the marketplace. Recently Kevin completed the implementation of VDFs and Dandelion++ and was going to start to work on the marketplace. But due to the recent economic conditions, we would like to ask for help funding this part of the project. I am the only source of funding and the current economic conditions are greatly affecting the originally planned funding duration. We need help getting the marketplace off the ground and would like some assistance.

Milestone 1 - Implement a web of trust system (23 XMR)

As part of the marketplace, there will be a web of trust system for the reviews of items and merchants on the marketplace.

This system will technically be useful outside of the marketplace plugin, but is needed for the marketplace.

Milestone 2 - Finish marketplace plugin (45 XMR)

This milestone is completed when the marketplace is in it's stable version/official release.

Milestone 3 - Documentation (7 XMR)

Documentation is a necessary part of every project and Onionr is no exception. The completion of this milestone will indicate that the marketplace is documented to the extent that a newcomer (one that already understands how to use monero) will be able to buy/sell items on the marketplace.

Learn More

More can be learned about Onionr by going to the git repository here: https://git.voidnet.tech/kev/Onionr, or by visiting our (partially complete) website at https://www.onionr.net/.