Meet the decentralized marketplace that could one day steal Amazon’s smile

This could someday disrupt Amazon…

Centralized marketplaces like Amazon and eBay are increasingly becoming the preferred channel through which people trade with one another but these marketplaces are fraught with problems that limit the amount of value market participants can obtain from them.
Decentralization could indeed offer a solution to these problems. After all, why should a few companies be in complete control of our means of fulfilling one of our most basic needs — trading? 
Among the few up-and-coming peer-to-peer decentralized marketplaces in existence, one stands out — Bazaars. This platform truly holds the potential to change the face of e-commerce forever.

What’s wrong with centralized markets?
Centralized marketplaces like Amazon have a multitude of problems that they cannot separate themselves from, they arise from their own nature. In contrast, decentralized marketplaces provide all the benefits of their centralized counterparts while avoiding such problems. Their peer-to-peer nature allows market participants to trade directly with one another, eliminating middlemen.
Fees!
The first big problem with the online marketplaces of today is the exorbitant fees levied mainly on merchants. The companies running these markets tend to leverage their strong networks effects to squeeze every last penny out of merchants, leaving them with ridiculously thin profit margins. 
Amazon, for instance, charges its “individual” merchants a dollar per item sold — before taking a cut of between 6 and 45%! keep in mind that these are often small retailers or individuals whose products hardly fetch any more than a couple of dollars in profit.
With a third of sellers on Amazon making less than $1000 monthly and having margins of about just 10%, almost half the sellers on Amazon make $100 or less monthly.

A third of Amazon sellers make less than $1000/month!
Buyers too aren’t safe from high fees because while they’re not charged for purchases (at least not directly), they still have to pay a lot in transaction fees, especially for cross-border trades involving multiple currencies.
Pricing disputes
Contrary to what they’d have you believe, centralized marketplaces do like to have some level of control over the pricing of goods and services on their platforms. Amazon, for example, has been in several disputes with large retailers over pricing. This is bad for merchants and consumers alike.

Data misuse
Centralized market platforms have been known to collect and analyse huge amounts of data from their users and then use it for all sorts of nefarious things — from jacking up prices for more wealthy consumers to giving certain products an unfair advantage. Consumer data is also often stolen by hackers.

Censorship
This is one of the biggest problems with centralized marketplaces. They can choose not to list, delist, or even suppress a merchant’s products at whim. Amazon is especially guilty of this as they, being merchants on their platform themselves, often delist and suppress competing products while promoting theirs to gain a competitive advantage.

Small shop owners protesting against Amazon in India
Other problems with centralized marketplaces include unfair competition and chargeback fraud, which are particularly harmful to small retailers and individuals.