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My understanding is federated “payment” systems are difficult. I think there is active discussion on the topic, but I’m not sure where code/development is at, or if it’s even started.
I think flohmarkt (“federated decentral classified ad software”) is the closest we have right now. It has low (~10-30) Monthly Active Users (MAU), but is in active development.
That sounds interesting! And even over 30 active instances are listed on codeberg: https://codeberg.org/flohmarkt/flohmarkt/wiki/flohmarkt-instances#a-list-of-server-known-to-run-flohmarkt. I will check it out.
Services like eBay are part platform, part people. eBay’s people do a lot behind the scenes to ensure it runs smoothly and ethically… AND they take a significant chunk of the proceeds. You could put up some free software that does auctions but you wouldn’t have all those high paid security and trust workers working for you.
I mean theoretically, sure. Realistically, no. Because people would reneg on their offers, and you have no recourse as a seller.
Yeah, it would be full of scammers on poorly moderated instances or their own private instances. The legit instances would have to work constantly to keep themselves defederated from all the scammers.
Cash and in-person transfers would be enough for me. I’m only on facebook because I find a lot of great stuff on marketplace, and I always do local meetups and pay in person. I wish there was a better platform.
I have seen the fhlomarkets in the past, I’d love for them to take off but uptake is slow and usually it’s odd items at ridiculous prices.
I know there was a post on lemmy/piefed from a Melbourne based guy who added a site he was working on a few months ago. Not sure how it went but he was open to talking about how he set up and what he was hoping from it.
