The Block is a fully decentralised e-commerce marketplace, designed for privacy and low fees. It takes the form of a standalone app based on Ethereum’s smart contracts and uses the ETH currency for all payments except merchant listings. As a global application with minimal technical requirements for users, this is free trade at its most free. BitBoost’s aim is to facilitate truly free trade on a global scale. Building on the work of almost three years, The Block is their solution: a totally peer-to-peer e-commerce experience, without unnecessary costs, geographical limitations or arbitrary restrictions.
Decentralized The Block has no centralized authority - it's built on the Ethereum blockchain using smart contracts. Transactions are completed in a trustless manner, with no third party involvement, which means no one has to rely on trust for the system to work. Transactions cannot be censored. Listed items are available at all times, to everyone, with no need for sellers to stay online 24/7, since The Block runs on thousands of computers worldwide. This makes it resistant to the kinds of attacks that force conventional websites offline. Decentralization equals greater privacy, freedom, and stability.
Absolute Privacy Although transactions will be on the blockchain, The Block is fully encrypted. Messages between buyer and seller are encrypted, and personal information (such as shipping address) is also encrypted by default. Your information is protected from any kind of leak or attack.
Protected Funds Trading over an anonymous, decentralized system poses a challenge - how do you know you can trust other users? The Block provides an escrow system, guaranteed by BitBoost. Buyers send payments to this escrow system. Payments are released to sellers only when goods have arrived as expected. Any disagreements will be handled through arbitration, further reducing risk. BitBoost's escrow system allows sellers to designate any provider they wish to serve as their escrow agent.
Low Fees Due to its unique architecture, The Block is able to reduce our fees to 1 USD (in BitBoost tokens) per listing. The Block doesn’t charge a fee to purchase items. Even image hosting is free, and The Block takes no percentage from your final sale price.
It's Fast Features like searching are instant, as you type. BitBoost has enhanced The Block with caching servers around the world to speed up interactions with the Ethereum blockchain.
Easy Payments The Block has a built-in wallet that stores ether, the native currency of Ethereum. Purchases are made directly from this wallet, and sales revenue goes directly into it. Users can buy ether from within The Block using BTC.
Customizable The Block is available as a native app on all major desktop platforms: Windows, macOS, and Linux. The app includes support for themes and even comes with two themes built in. Users can bookmark searches, sellers, and items, for later use. And, more options are planned.
Global Marketplace At launch, our app will support 20 languages, with more to come. The BitBoost team wants to lower barriers to trade. We feel that access to a global marketplace is an option every human being should have.