SET UP A MARKETPLACE

A market can serve a place, a trade or a community. It has no platform in the middle. Each member keeps their own ledgdex.

One operator keeps a ledger that has two jobs:

- The index: the list of shops in the market.

- The root: the list of members that the operator admits.

Shops sell to admitted members. Buyers find offers through the index. The operator is the default arbiter of disputes. Example: Marketplace does all of these steps on one computer.

1. The operator makes the ledgdex of the exchange and publishes it (Publishing a Ledgdex Online):

ledgdex init exchange --name "ONITO medmodel exchange" --about "Trained medical models, from bots to clinics" \
    --key exchange --url https://exchange.example --dest git@github.com:YOU/exchange.git --branch main
ledgdex publish exchange

2. Each seller makes its own ledgdex under the exchange:

ledgdex init biobot --name "biobot" --key biobot --root https://exchange.example

3. Shops and buyers send their public key to the operator. The commands ledgdex keygen NAME and ledgdex init show the public key.

4. The operator checks who they are, outside the ledger. Then the operator admits them:

ledgdex admit exchange ed25519:SELLER_KEY --name "biobot"
ledgdex admit exchange ed25519:BUYER_KEY --name "orthonalyzebot"
ledgdex publish exchange

5. The operator lists the sellers:

ledgdex list exchange https://biobot.example --note "knee bone density models"

6. A seller can offer to admitted members only, with "allow": "admitted". The seller then also admits the buyers that it serves, with ledgdex admit biobot KEY. A seller can also offer to anyone, with "any".

7. Buyers read the index to find offers:

ledgdex discover https://market.example --offers

8. Each day, each member runs ledgdex check on the ledgers that they trade with (Checking for Tampering). The check finds each rewrite, with signed proof.

The operator decides who is a member and decides disputes. The operator signs these decisions, and anyone can read them.

The operator cannot change the ledger of a member, hide a sale or set a price. The operator's key is the most valuable key in the market.

Keep the operator key offline, and use a device key each day (Keys, Devices and Recovery).

Other ways to run a market:

- Without --root, a market is only an index. Anyone can be in its list.

- Many markets can list the same shop.

- A shop with no root is the arbiter of its own offers, unless it names an arbiter (Disputes and Arbiters).

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