It’s Cyber Monday, and Public Market is Open For Business

This holiday season, we’re betting on the power of crypto to provide real value to mainstream shoppers

We announced Public Market earlier this year with a very big mission: to end the era of extractive eCommerce monopolies. Since then, we’ve shared our beliefs around decentralized network effects and why many of today’s tech giants are more vulnerable to disruption than they seem.

At the end of the day, however, theories and ideas don’t topple monopolies: markets do. Specifically, market options that allow consumers to make different choices and receive more value.

For that reason, we couldn’t be more excited to announce the public launch of Public Market’s flagship storefront, just in time for Cyber Monday and the holiday shopping season.

For those unfamiliar with our model, Public Market eliminates the commissions that eat up 15%-40% of our purchases every time we shop on Amazon, eBay or one of the other centralized eCommerce marketplaces. Without those fees, sellers are able to make bigger margins while passing on part of those savings to you, the buyers in the form of tokenized rewards.

When you’re browsing on Public Market, next to the price of each item you’ll also see a diamond next to a number that represents the value of the buyer reward associated with that item’s purchase. For example, a customer buying a 5.11 RUSH12 Tactical Backpack for $99.99 will receive credits for $15.00 in rewards. The Public Market system tracks buyers’ total rewards, which will be distributed to the users upon the launch of the company’s Patron (PTRN) token anticipated in 2019.

Over the past few months, we’ve announced numerous merchant partners who are helping fill up Public Market’s shelves with all the things you want this season, from personal electronics to long winter reads to the internet’s greatest vinyl collection. In total, we’re launching with more than 7 million items available — and we’re only getting started. To date most of the products are books and vinyls, but over the next few months you will see us add a huge selection of new products that will allow you to accomplish much of your online shopping through public.market.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Cyber Monday and the holiday season without a special campaign, now would it? To thank our early adopters for your patronage and to incentivize you to to spread the word and help us grow, we’re announcing “Decentralize Your December,” a Holiday Bonus Rewards pool.

From each day now through December 15th, buyers will get a portion of that bonus pool based on what percentage of the gross merchandise volume (GMV) from their own purchases and the purchases of anyone they referred represented on that day. With a Holiday Bonus Rewards pool equivalent to $5000 per day for 20 days ($100,000 in total!), this could mean that the earliest buyers may take home more in rewards than they spent on merchandise.

The goal of all of this — both the buyer rewards and the Holiday Bonus Rewards — is to make shopping a more valuable experience. In today’s market, there is simply no reason 15%-40% of our purchases should be going to intermediary marketplaces, when that value could instead be making shopping better for the two main parties involved — the buyer and the seller. Public Market is empowered, fair and open eCommerce, the way it’s supposed to be.

Keep your eyes peeled for some additional announcements from us, including a number of holiday product collections curated by some of our favorite members of the crypto community.

And in the meantime, go check out public.market and start earning today!