Thanks for the detailed proposal.
I’d like to suggest that we shift focus slightly before diving deeper into protocol design.
An MVP, unlike a PoC, needs to prove not just technical viability but also market viability. Technical feasibility seems relatively clear and was partially demonstrated by the PoC. The missing piece, in my view, is economic viability—who are we building this for, what value does it deliver?
Right now, the plan reads as too abstract. Shall we start with identifying potential consumers of such a marketplace? Let’s talk to teams like Status, Railgun, or The Graph. What infrastructure are they running themselves today that they’d rather outsource through a decentralized marketplace? What pain points do they have?
The way I see the value prop is two-sided (as one would expect for a marketplace):
- For app developers: “no-infra,” simple integration, focus on building.
- For service providers: a revenue stream.
Both aspects involve trade-offs, and we should have a clear vision on what we’re willing to sacrifice.
Take reputation as an example. I’m skeptical we can build a robust, permissionless, ungameable reputation system in the MVP phase. If reputation can be reset cheaply by creating a new identity, then capital lock-up must be meaningful—but not so high that it prices out most participants. Either we tolerate some fraud (low stakes), or we require high deposits (limiting us to high-value use cases, which often lean centralized). The choice depends on what use cases we’re aiming for.
Or, consider the financial aspect. If we require deposit lock-ups, then services must be valuable enough to justify locked capital. If a service provider can get 5–10% APY passively (in TradFi or DeFi), what kind of services justify forgoing that? I suspect the use cases that justify such capital costs will be financial or security-critical. Could we convince a DeFi protocol that avoiding centralized dependencies (e.g. WalletConnect) is worth it in terms of capital costs and switching costs to a decentralized marketplace instead?
This is a multi-dimensional design space. To navigate it, we need:
- A clearer picture of our target users and their needs.
- A sense of what trade-offs are acceptable and how strict our security model is.
- And ideally, some research on similar efforts—what’s been tried, what worked, what didn’t.
Let’s validate user demand before finalizing the technical path.