The shift to peer-to-peer online commerce won’t happen overnight. Until this technology becomes widespread, we need tools that help the transition go more smoothly.

Some of the earliest feedback we heard from ecommerce sellers who were interested in OpenBazaar was that they wanted a way to easily share their store and listings on their social networks. To answer this we built OpenBazaar.com.

A regular website to look into a decentralized network

OpenBazaar is an application that users have to download and run on their own computers to connect to and participate in the network. It is built this way to make the decentralization of the network possible. While the tech isn’t available for a full OpenBazaar buying & selling experience in a browser yet, that doesn’t mean there can’t be just a simple website that looks into the marketplace.

That solved the simplest part of the problem: sellers wanted to share their links easily and potential buyers—who may or may not know about OpenBazaar yet—wanted to view them in a predictable way.

We launched OpenBazaar.com in the middle of last year and it’s been a hit. Traffic to the site is growing around 40% month over month. This shows us that users are interested in decentralized applications that uphold some core values, but that are also accessible wherever they may be in their technological adventures.

Sharing store & listings from within OpenBazaar

People who want to share stores and listings easily on the web can grab their links from OpenBazaar.com several ways:

By clicking the green “View on Web” link in the address bar within their OpenBazaar client:

By copying the store ID and pasting it on the end of https://openbazaar.com/store/ like this:

https://openbazaar.com/store/QmcUDmZK8PsPYWw5FRHKNZFjszm2K6e68BQSTpnJYUsML7





Sharing store & listings from OpenBazaar.com

On OpenBazaar.com there are additional features including these social share buttons:

There is also the widget for sellers who have websites where they want to showcase their OpenBazaar store. Simply copy the code and add it to your site wherever you can post an embed or add HTML.

We are working to build a fully decentralized marketplace and social experience to promote privacy and autonomy for users around the world. It’s clear to us, though, that the road to full decentralization is made up of multiple decentralized steps rather than a complete jump.

Moving from centralized systems we are displeased with is a process that will take some time and the ability to make small advances through that process is imperative. Building decentralized apps that also interface with centralized apps that people are used to using right now is important to help them better match their desires for the future with their present reality.