Anonymous investor agrees to rescue OpenBazaar from closure

Anonymous philanthropist will fund the maintenance of the infrastructure of one of the oldest decentralized marketplaces, OpenBazaar, at least through the end of 2020.

BREAKING NEWS!

An anonymous donor has agreed to cover the costs to run OpenBazaar infrastructure through at least the end of the year. pic.twitter.com/VwSz9g27sa

— OpenBazaar (@openbazaar) September 27, 2020

On Friday, September 25, OpenBazaar said it had fallen out of favor with users and lacked sufficient funds to continue operating.

It was a good run. Maybe you can still help!https://t.co/XJOjqh2vvD

— OpenBazaar (@openbazaar) September 25, 2020

There is no fixed target, but roughly we need $100,000 to operate for another year,

the project representatives said.

Without financing, OpenBazaar prepared to halt seed nodes from October 1, discontinue support for the Haven wallet and internal messenger, and provide user instructions for withdrawals. The marketplace also planned to publish the source code of its search engine in open access.

Following that announcement, users donated about $13 thousand in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and ZCash to the platform. The amount sent by the anonymous investor was not disclosed, though the fundraising drive has not stopped.

“We still need your help. 2021 is coming soon. Please support free trade. We will seek ways to reduce costs and decentralize the infrastructure to slow the rate at which your contributions are spent,” the platform’s representatives said.

OpenBazaar, the decentralized marketplace, was launched in 2014 at a hackathon in Toronto and initially focused on darknet markets. Later the focus shifted mainly to small merchants.

The main distinction of OpenBazaar from traditional platforms lies in its implementation of p2p features: the network is sustained by user collaboration and has no central body that could restrict merchants in their actions.

Since launch, users have conducted trades on the platform totalling around $44 million in cryptocurrency. This is a small figure compared with the turnover of darknet markets, through which, according to Chainalysis, about $5-15 million passes daily.

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