The global economy is undergoing a major shift. Some are calling it the ‘Uberisation’ of the economy. Others are calling this new economy on the horizon the sharing economy. And you’ve no doubt heard the terms gig and freelancing economy thrown around.

But no matter what term you use, you’re basically talking about the same thing: the peer-to-peer exchange of goods and services.

The sharing economy emerged as a sort of counter-economic movement. So it’s a little bit ironic that the concept has become a powerful business model. There’s no shortage of peer-to-peer online marketplaces. And some of them, namely Uber and Airbnb, are immensely successful private companies.

This isn’t surprising. If you can create a network or platform on which users trade actively peer-to-peer you can generate revenue simply by taking a fee from every transaction. And if you can make your platform sufficiently sticky, making it hard for users to leave, you can take a hefty fee.

And that’s exactly what companies like Airbnb, Uber, and Upwork (the largest peer-to-peer marketplace for freelancing) have done. These sites take 10–25% off typical transactions.

This begs the question: is it really possible to create a sharing economy marketplace in the original spirit of the idea?

The Limits of Centralized Marketplaces

Online marketplaces have no doubt filled a real need. They’ve made it easier for people to earn some extra cash or even make a living without a traditional full-time, 9–5 job. But as these marketplaces have grown, it’s become harder for individuals to succeed.

More users means more competition. And competition drives down prices and user profits. In an ideal world, you would just leave a marketplace that gets too saturated. But many of these marketplaces are basically monopolies, so you don’t have many other options.

Plus, if you choose to leave one marketplace for another, you have to be ready to start from scratch: All the reviews and feedback you’ve accumulated will be lost. The marketplace owners could purposely block you from exporting your data.

Centralization puts marketplace owners in control of your reputation. They can charge exorbitant fees because they know you can’t easily leave. But that’s not the only problem.

Centralization also imposes limits on marketplace transactions. In real life, you and I could negotiate a trade involving any combination of goods, services, and currency. But online marketplaces force users into simple transactions, like cash for services or goods.

A more efficient marketplace — one with lower transaction fees — would let users trade just about anything they choose.

The Opportunity for Decentralization

It’s now possible to build a secure decentralized marketplace thanks to the development of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. Such a marketplace could charge users much lower fees for two reasons.

A blockchain-powered marketplace would be self-regulating. Users can be incentivized to carry out critical market regulation tasks like dispute resolution, which would drastically reduce labor costs. Trust-less transactions carried out on a public blockchain provide advanced security while circumventing financial institutions and their high fees and sluggish settlements. And smart contracts combined with native escrow give buyers and sellers the assurance they won’t get ripped off.

Fees can actually be reduced to zero when two users decide to trade goods or services without exchanging currency. This is only possible in a decentralized marketplace.

Accept.IO aims to be such a marketplace.

Of course, fee-less marketplaces have existed for a while (think Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, and Kijiji), but they lack the security and privacy of a blockchain-powered marketplace.