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.

You mean as in an auctioning platform? That's legally a bit harder to achieve, as auctions usually have the rule that if nobody outbids you, then your offer is binding. To enforce that, instances would need to verify your identity. That's easy for a larger company to do, but not that easy for hobbyists.

And then, to be federated, you would also need to make sure that other instances that you federate with uphold that standard.

Also, if you do auctions across international borders, how do you even prosecute somebody who does not obey the rules of an auction?

We could start a buy/sell/swap space using existing Lemmy technology, if we left the messy details for users to figure out for themselves.

Messy details add up quick, though. Payments, currencies, mailing addresses, reputation, conflict resolution, returns, scammers and spam.

But "Craigs List" solved very little of that on day one, and went on to be pretty successful.

So it's possible. happening now, I've just learned. Neat!.
https://lemmy.sdf.org/c/buyselltrade

(Edit: Added link to the surreal thing. Thanks!)
(Edit 2: I swallowed the onion whole. Mostly jokes, there, I think. I'm gonna leave the link anyway.)

I mean theoretically, sure. Realistically, no. Because people would reneg on their offers, and you have no recourse as a seller.

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.

Biggest issue is probably that everything, including private messages, is public here. Not where you want to share your adress/phone number.

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.

A federated ebay is basically impossible. For that you would need real time communication between different instances. Otherwise people on the sellers instance would have an advantage in winning the auctions, defeating the purpose of making it federated in the first place.

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.

It wouldn’t need to be that way — if everyone puts in their max bid at time of bidding, the seller’s instance keeps that secret until the auction clears, and then waits for all bids to clear at the end and picks the highest, you would get the correct outcome.

Meanwhile in the middle the current bid price might be out-of-date by some minutes.

Auction sniping would not work but idgaf about that for sure.

Trust in the seller’s instance seems like it would be the hard part.

There was also Free cycle kinda worked for a while and was pretty basic

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.

...flohmarket?

https://lemmy.sdf.org/c/buyselltrade
one of lemmys best communities

Oh! Thanks!