Decentralized marketplace, OpenBazaar announced in a recent update on Twitter that it will no longer close down its operations. This follows a huge donation sent to the marketplace by an anonymous donor. The decision to shut down the decentralized marketplace was initially shared last week by the development team.
Low trading activity
As a decentralized marketplace, OpenBazaar was launched in 2014 to facilitate the buying and selling of items, including tech products, without any central governing body. Interestingly, users were provided the option to complete transactions with several digital currencies. However, the marketplace began losing funds for operation as the activities on the platform began to decrease.
“Over the past several months, we have been relying on OpenBazaar’s donation funds to support these infrastructure costs, but those funds will be depleted shortly,” the company said.
In the announcement made last week, OpenBazaar noted that the number of buyers and sellers on the platform dropped significantly. As such, the team behind the project decided to close down the market except the community intervenes by donating funds to lengthen the days of the marketplace, if not for years. Although no specific target of funds was disclosed, one of the representatives had opined that a $100,000 donation could sustain the marketplace for a year.
OpenBazaar will continue its operation
After OpenBazaar went public for donations, it informed on September 26 that the community donated more than $11,000 in cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Zcash, Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and others. Although the exact amount sent to the decentralized market by the unknown donor was not disclosed, the team did mention that it will sustain the market operation until the end of the year.
Additionally, the team had promised to make judicious use of all the donations in order to sustain market operations for a longer time, while still maintaining its decentralized infrastructure.
