The original Steemit P2P Marketplace is back.

#SteemFleaMarket utilizes the power of not only the STEEM blockchain, but also the power of its community.

About four months ago, in late 2017 an idea was born - to create a market for goods and services available to all steemians. I believed that creating the Steem Flea Market would be an effective way for people around the world to circulate steem and feed their families:

Holding STEEM and SBD is rewarding in a number of ways. But to fully benefit from its power, in the future, and now, we need marketplaces. Sources of incentives to trade our STEEM and SBD internally. With an initiative such as #SteemFleaMarket people have a real incentive to use the power of their up-votes or trade SBD for real goods and services, knowing that there will be others interested in the exchange.

The creation of marketplaces such as our @steemfleamarket is incentivizing all of us to keep our SBD/STEEM inside the STEEM blockchain and grow our up-vote strength so we can all help turn this platform into a powerful source of income.

This is the idea of a circular market - where buyers and sellers come together on steemit.com and create an environment for economic activity. Steem Flea Market was destined to become a STEEM-POWERED utility, right here on steemit.com.

The way it worked was simple, yet the setup was not as user friendly as I wanted it. Steem Flea Market focused on giving things away in exchange of community up-votes - which, for the lack of a better creative term, was dubbed as the

"Upvote Lottery Style Give Away If The Upvote Meets The Minimum."

I explained this mechanism in the following manner:

With the power of STEEMit.com anyone can give anything away. For example, if the item you want to give away has a minimum target price you want to reach in up-votes so as to cover the initial costs you paid out of your pocket for the stuff you're giving away, then you just mention this in your post. Possibilities are such that curation guilds and users can up-vote your #SteemFleaMarket post and almost always allow for successful raising of number of up-votes to make your giveaway possible.

Alternatively, users could list as an auction where they could set a minimum number in up-votes plus set a min auction amount. Highest bidder wins after 7 days. The benefit to this approach to listing your stuff with #SteemFleaMarket is that it would be harder to scam the system because several people would be bidding. Of Course, since actual SBD would exchange hands there needs to be a clearing house and that would be @steemfleamarket This is the optimal way to ensure that everything is contained within certain parameters of security and accountability when using such blockchain-based markets.

That last sentence is why we can conclude that, perhaps, being a clearing house was an idea sprung out of excess ambition and ultimately got in the way of our growth.

The setup was not optimal:

• Steemians had to visit an external website to submit their post to @steemfleamarket's blogroll through a tool developed by @binkley called SteemFlea! The tool was innovative and original to @steemfleamarket but ultimately made the user experience a bit cumbersome for most.
  
  

It reminded many of simulating a somewhat centralized craigslist-like experience. Steemians had to use their *posting keys* and for many, that was a roadblock simply because many had no idea what those keys were. I have received many messages on https://steemthat.com/profile/kaliju/ asking me how to post and what format should be followed.

A simple, but not as detailed graphical guide explaining the process of listing your goods and services was created:

Steemians had several post style options, depending on their needs:

1.UPVOTE-GIVEAWAY	2.DIRECT SBD SALE	3. AUCTION	4. TRADE
SET AMINNIMUM "UPVOTE" TAGRGET	NAME YOUR PRICE	CLASSIC MINIMUM BID	FIND STEEMIANS TO TRADE WITH
...to cover the initial cost of the item so you are not at a loss!	...see if anyone is interest to directly buy with SBD!	start with 1 SBD and see how high you can go!	Looking for something? Ask if anyone's got it. Trade your CD's, Books and whatever else.
Community up-votes will decide the fate of this offer.	Garage-sale anyone? Can't beat the prices!	Classic bid system. Bids accepted only from those who up-vote first and then bid with their value in the comments.	This is best done locally so use a local Steem Flea Market hashtag, for example #steemfleamarket-usa

At a glance, it all made sense, but I've failed to note the overall complexity of this UX setup.

Further inconveniences started to reveal themselves:

• Everything revolved around the #steemfleamarket hashtag. There were numerous instances where spammers would use the hashtag to promote their posts and the way our portal worked was that at steemthat.com the system would pick up these posts tagged with #steemfleamarket and populate the dedicated page on http://steemthat.com/ (now defunct) with those posts. As a one-man team, I simply could not keep up and filter through the excessive spam. It was also daunting having to rely on instinct to distinguish between legitimate offers and potentially scammy ones. There was once a post offering a car for a number of up-votes - I still struggle to believe that it was a real, non-sarcastic offer.
• Acting as a clearing house, with good intentions to help people settle their deals was too much responsibility requiring a full-time commitment.
• Having people post directly to @steemfleamarket was a mistake. User had no control if they wanted to edit their posts and the payout calculation process was beyond my not-so-mathematical brain.
  +There was no way to communicate for sellers and buyers and to reach me to request changes to a post, it was mandatory to do so through a third party website, like steemthat.com or steem.chat - involving additional steps, trust issues and registration.
• Users setting up their first posts with #steemfleamarket had unrealistic expectations and offered items worth hundreds of dollars. I tried explaining that:

Start with small items that cost you under $10 - you will raise the money in up-votes FAST. When you become an established, reputable seller/giver on @steemfleamarket - then, you can try selling or giving away something bigger in value, over $50 and up. Don't start offering cars as your first Flea Market offer lol.

We had a few items that reached their targets successfully - but that accounted for about 2% of the offers that were active at the time.

• I had hoped that the community would see #steemfleamarket as a way to give back to the less fortunate around the world and exchange goods and services for SBD/STEEM . I'm sure many of us have plenty of junk that needs to be thrown away - or better yet, passed on to someone who might need it. Alas, living in "a world of abundance", not many shared my sentiment.

I envisioned a possibility that:

...maybe someone like @ned or @thejohalfiles (who showed his support on our opening post, thank you so much), could someday decide to delegate us enough steempower so we could put it to good use, expand on our original idea and make it possible for @steemfleamarket to enable Steemians to give their things away to charities or other legitimate causes helping the less fortunate without incurring any losses to the one's giving away and also profiting the investors. Imagine if, during some disaster people come together and donate commodities though the unified open circular market that is @steemfleamarket, resulting in steemit.com ending up on the front cover of Times magazine or CNN.

That's a dream worth fighting for and we will continue to invest, promote and help steemians to start giving the things they no longer need to those that do, and selling merchandise like we don't even need the evil eBay or Amazon. :)

Cool story, but what now? Does #steemfleamarket have a future?

Yes! And the there's a reason it's called a 2.0 update:

#STEEMFLEAMARKET is downgrading, to a simple, yet more powerful than ever before concept.

In most instances a 2.0 version of a project signifies further additions to its mechanics. Here, however, #steemfleamarket is being simplified to a zen-like beauty:

• STEEM POWERED: I have added SP to @kaliju account for the purpose of supporting and curating posts in the #steemfleamarket category. It's not much, but enough to incentivize new users to start trading and offering "one man's trash another man's treasure" items.
  From now on, anytime anyone posts a reasonably priced item for a giveaway using the #steemfleamarket hashtag, two things will happen:

1. I will instantly up-vote such post
   and
2. Resteem it to @steemfleamarket for others to find.

• What users post, and how, is now entirely up to them - @steemfleamarket will not act as a middle gate and users will no longer need to worry about accessing 3rd party tools to post. Simply create a post, tag it with #steemfleamarket and if it looks legit, it will be up-voted with $1 or more.
• It's a strictly P2P experience now - users are responsible for their own actions, including communications, and the only thing @steemfleamarket guarantees is an up-vote from @kaliju so your efforts in creating a post don't go to waste!

Steemit Influencers

I'm asking for your help delegating SP to the account, even if temporary, so we could have a bigger impact and allow people to offer items whose costs can be covered for things like international shipping. This will grow many accounts on steemit and increase our worth together on the platform.
Please contact me on https://steem.chat or Steem Flea Market discord!

I would also like to start a curation guild that will focus on enabling people to share physical goods and services offered around #steemfleamarket. If you would like to be a part of the solution on steemit and make a difference for many, then please get in touch and join the proposed guild.

Steemians, want to help? You can!

Resteem this update and write a brief post of your own about Steem Flea Market and get up-voted by @kaliju. All languages are welcome! Leave the link to your post and/or resteem in the comments below! It's not much but hopefully enough to incentivize you to help spread the word.

This will directly help spread the AWARENESS so that more people can give or sell stuff away using #STEEMFLEAMARKET ❤️

It's still about giving and healing and #steemfleamarket is here to stay and grow one kind deed at a time.

Thank you to all supporters - I love you people.

Love, peace and freedom,
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