OpenBazaar needs your support

As of the 1st of October, OpenBazaar will be undergoing some significant changes.

OpenBazaar’s supporting services (e.g. seed nodes, API wallet, exchange rate API), which OB1 has financially maintained for the past 5 years, will shut down unless additional community funding can be raised.

Moreover, it is with a heavy heart that we will be removing Haven from the iOS App Store and Google Play Store on October 1. [Note that your app will remain on your device but will not work as expected due to underlying OpenBazaar services being shut down].

We recommend that Haven users immediately remove funds from their wallet.

In the coming days we will be publishing explainers on how to release funds from your nodes. We will also be open sourcing our search engine and Blockbook indexer code for those that may want to run the infrastructure privately.

When we launched OpenBazaar back in 2014, we wanted to bring the full power of decentralized marketplaces to a global audience. We were lucky enough to raise money from world class investors to found OB1, and have worked tirelessly on the vision of free trade.

Unfortunately, we simply haven’t achieved the level of user growth and adoption required to build a sustainable business off serving OpenBazaar/Haven users. As a result, OB1 cannot sustain funding the ongoing infrastructure costs.

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. At OB1, we have desperately tried to secure more funding to not only maintain OpenBazaar’s support costs, but execute the next phase of the protocol that we believe can unlock explosive user adoption. Sadly, we have been unsuccessful and have no choice but to discontinue these supporting services.

We would like to apologize for the short notice, which is the result of last minute funding plans falling-through. We will do everything in our power to try and extend the window so that users can safely withdraw their funds from their OpenBazaar and Haven wallets.

There is only one possibility for OpenBazaar and Haven to continue, and cancel the shutdown: community support.

If you have been positively impacted by OpenBazaar or you believe in the mission & vision of a global decentralized marketplace, we need your financial support today. Please consider donating at the following addresses:

BTC: 3JuykfZRbCepzkVLLseSaiufDJ5AC8ae8R
LTC: MTTEVR5pdAHJNmmFNzVjaQhGB9qLkHLk7m
ZEC: t1UEN9mf9hMccwTznqBoJFh2FERgyuMJ2oA
BCH: qq9favzja34zywrp222cwrx4fny9fe64pyaxl5dvar
ETH: 0x71A6e8B0580104dacA0633a9BA6F90181C6F40a5