Being back on Hive has been a really good experience these past two weeks, I'm stoked this place still carries as much potential as it always has!
With the buzzing developments on the platform I can see a world where a true parallel economy is being erected by us - based on Hive and HBD.
Now I have asked this question before, years ago, but after searching a bit I could not find an answer this time around either...
Is there a Hive-based marketplace on this platform?
I distinctly remember this being the case in the early days of Steem (did I merely dream it and have a false memory now??!)
Anybody else remember that?
You could go onto that platform/frontend and put your chili seeds up for sale, denominated in Hive (Steem back then). I know many find it more important to build bridges and onramps, to connect Hive to the current financial system... but to those committed to stick around for the long haul and wanting to be as system-independent as possible using Hive and HBD as payment method would be downright glorious, and produce no tethers to the fiat system matrix.
The seller would - at their own expense temporarily - cover the shipping costs in fiat at the local postage office and would be paid for the goods + shipping in Hive or likely in HBD.
The marketplace would physically link people in real life! I could suddenly decide I wanted special coconut seeds from some of my hive friends in southeast Asia, Ghana or Nigeria. They in turn could link to their Hive shop directly beneath their tutorials and posts explaining the ins and outs of gardening.
Other arts and crafts could be sold as well. This could even extend to service-providing concepts like fiver.com where you basically offer your skills in line with your competency, and get paid for your time and effort... in Hive or HBD. One may also opt to be paid in a community specific token, giving the respective tokens a sudden use case within that community. No longer just "nice to have" but rather "hey, I can buy something with this!"
Hive would not "merely" be a digital place of social relations, it would transform into a city. We have a currency already, why has nobody set up shop?
Now, I have seen people sell stuff in return for Hive on their blogs but that would make it hard for users to find all that is offered. A more centralized location to find it all would be amazing, and that is precisely the logic behind a marketplace.
Of course this could already be done without such a platform by sending Hive to another account and hoping they don't steal the funds, but what then are we doing if we already have the technological potential here to implement it correctly? The escrow function of such a neutral marketplace, supported by on-chain smart contracts would be an amazing feature. And I feel: much used.
Or would it? What am I not seeing? Too much effort to build? Too laborious to moderate and maintain?
I am sure this is neither a novel idea nor particularly simple to do... I just feel that that is something still missing around here. Gravely missing.
Even a layer two token could help achieve this, have it all run on a hive engine based token. I don't know, I'm not a coder. But capable people are on Hive and many users are pointing out that DHF funds are very much available to be used for sensible projects if the community deems it worthy.
So please get me up to speed here: Is there a Hive marketplace of sorts (using Hive and HBD as native currency). And if not, do you know of any such developments? Is there a promising DHF proposal or crew who is on it already and could use further support?
If you showed a functioning marketplace to newcomers (one that is only offering legal goods of course!) I feel it would have dramatic onboarding effects as well and just vastly improve the ecosystem. So many other projects like @ecency, @leofinance, @peakd or @nftshowroom successfully have added tremendous value to this place in recent years and are continuing to do so every day.
If I had the skills, I would be doing it. Anybody know the status of such an undertaking or why nothing grand has happened on that front?
