If you’re familiar with Bitcoin as a technology, you know that decentralization is a key part. Decentralization helps protect the Bitcoin network from attack and allows transactions to be confirmed without trust.
Since some of the most positive aspects of decentralization are obvious to Bitcoin users, we wanted to address why Gliph Marketplace, though Bitcoin-enabled, is not decentralized:
- We believe Gliph Marketplace is needed now. In the United States, peer-to-peer transactions are dominated by a single organization. Building something that can transcend the current paradigm means first focusing on the user experience, not on the challenging technical underpinnings of a well-performing decentralized system.
- We believe there is already a good effort to build a decentralized marketplace at Open Bazaar. A community already exists to support the Open Bazaar project, and we believe there are good reasons for it to exist.
- We believe Gliph Marketplace serves a missed community of people who are looking for a well-lit marketplace that seamlessly integrates Bitcoin for payments. This community has just as much potential to grow as Dark Markets have shown for illegal items.
How and When will Decentralization Come to Gliph?
In the expanse of time, we believe many services will benefit from being decentralized. One particular area we’re keeping an eye on is the concept of decentralized identity.
Decentralized identity would mean that information about the users in a system would no longer be stored at Gliph exclusively, but rather an open environment that any company or service can use. One Name is an example of an early effort to build out a decentralized identity service.
In the future, we may look to allow our users to migrate their identities and accumulated reputation to a decentralized identity service.
Open Dialog
We intend to keep an open dialog with Gliph’s users and the greater cryptocurrency community about the evolution of the Gliph Platform and opportunities for decentralization. You can send us your thoughts and comments to support at gli.ph.