The most wonderful ecommerce time of the year just got more wonderful. Thanks to Public Market.

You have to love Public Market. They’re very much an atypical startup for the Portland area. They’re swinging for the fences as they work to build an ecommerce platform that’s designed to — wait for it — kill Amazon. Yes. That Amazon. And as if that’s not difficult enough? They decided to launch their platform to the public on Cyber Monday, the most server meltingest of days in ecommerce.

So while they’re not technically headquartered in Portland — even though it’s their largest office and houses a sizable chunk of their exec team — they’re worth keeping an eye on, for sure.

So what exactly are they doing to disrupt A smiley face to Z?

For those unfamiliar with our model, Public Market eliminates the commissions that eat up 15%-40% of our purchases every time we shop on Amazon, eBay or one of the other centralized eCommerce marketplaces. Without those fees, sellers are able to make bigger margins while passing on part of those savings to you, the buyers in the form of tokenized rewards.

It’s Cyber Monday, and Public Market is Open For Business

All well and good. But how exactly does it work? Well, luckily, the folks at Public Market were kind enough to donate a storefront so you can give it a test drive.

Pretty cool, right? I don’t mean my book selection. (Although, I secretly hope you found an interesting new title that you haven’t encountered before.) I mean this whole concept.

I certainly think it is. And I think it’s an incredibly interesting use of blockchain and tokens, to boot. So I can’t wait to see where this goes.

For more information or to start building a storefront of your own, visit Public Market.

Also, I wanted to take a second to recognize that I am completely guilty of this. I apologize. I will do the work to prevent myself from making this mistake in the future. And I’m really thankful to have people like Kristen in my world (and Twitter feed) who point these kind of mistakes out so that I can learn from them.

Rick Turoczy is creating connections in the Portland startup community | Patreon

Originally published at siliconflorist.com on November 30, 2018.