OB1, the OpenBazaar-based company, has raised $3 million in a new round of funding, drawing support from BlueYard, Union Square Ventures, and Andreessen Horowitz.



OpenBazaar, a decentralized marketplace that uses bitcoin, allows anyone in the world to buy and sell anything to anyone else, anywhere, for free. Its core developers released the first version of the peer-to-peer marketplace – OpenBazaar 1.0 – in April this year. In 2015, the team received funding from Union Square Ventures, Andreessen-Horowitz, and angel investor William Mougayar to form a company ‘OB1’, enabling full-time development of the protocol and software.



“After launch we were so excited to see how people have been using OpenBazaar, and with this new funding we’re confident it will allow us to bring the benefits of truly free and open trade to the world”, OB1 CEO Brian Hoffman said.



As the peer-to-peer software isn’t controlled by any company or organization, participants can easily engage in trade directly with each other using bitcoin. By removing the intermediaries for commerce online, OpenBazaar enables its users to avoid paying fees or having their trade controlled by middlemen.



This new round of funding, along with assistance from contributors around the world, will allow OB1 to continue improving the open source software and growing the peer-to-peer trade community. OB1 is now working to make peer-to-peer trade better than ever with the 2.0 version of the software.



“The reach and diversity of OpenBazaar usage shows the potential for decentralized applications: within a week of its release, buyers and sellers from 129 countries joined the network and began transacting with each other for free”, Brad Burnham, managing partner at Union Square Ventures, said. “We believe OpenBazaar has an opportunity to fundamentally transform the market structure of commerce, and we’re excited to welcome BlueYard as a new partner and co-investor in OB1.”