An OpenBazaar Steem Integration Feasibility Report

Let me start this off by saying I'm not an experienced crypto developer but I am a professional developer and have done project feasibility work before. So with that in mind I've decided to take a crack at looking through the OpenBazaar Wallet interface and determining if Steem is a good fit as requested in a recent post by @steemonob. The short answer is it could be doable, but there are some worrying potential issues that lead me to think a Steem integration might not be feasible. First I will provide the potential issues and in the last paragraph I will provide one potential solution which could warrant further discussion.

The key issue I found arises at the begin of a transaction. To use OpenBazaar the first thing that must happen is for a one time use escrow wallet to be created. As described on the OpenBazaar github for each transaction you must "generate an address and redeem script that is unique for the order". All other requirements Steem easily meets but this is a HUGE sticking point in my opinion.

The first issue will be that to create a Steem account for free the wait is 1-2 weeks, if one decided to pay the cost is roughly .02 eth or roughly $3 USD. On OpenBazaar this will likely be a huge turnoff to people and could give Steem a bad name as this would appear as a transaction fee.

Assuming we are okay with the transaction fee being a bit high or can somehow get the fee waved another issue is then presented. Steem signup requires email and SMS verification. Again this will be an issue as it increases transaction time, and requires the OpenBazaar wallet to somehow create throwaway SMS/email addresses. Based on a post by @gmichelbkk (https://steemit.com/steemit/@gmichelbkk/4-ways-to-create-a-new-account-on-steem) there are ways around this like using a third party service to anonymously create accounts but the cost would go up to $4 USD. Also worth noting is that by using a third party service there are additionally security risks to both parties.

The final and biggest issue is that there is a wait time when creating a new account through Steem or a third parties. Based on a bit of digging Steem users are reporting wait times of up to a week with the average wait being 24 hours(this might be off?) to create an account. Again this is going to be an issue as it would mean the process of creating an address to implement a transaction on OpenBazaar using Steem could take up to a week. This is going to be a huge turn off to users and I'd argue it would be irresponsible of the OpenBazaar development team to let this happen.

After a few hours of consideration the only real solution I can find to the problems presented above is to use pre created Steem accounts for OpenBazaar transactions. A trusted source or third party would need to register accounts, hand those accounts out to be used during a transaction, the account would be used and then "burned". I'm not sure how open the OpenBazaar community would be to this though. Given the above I'd say the next step would be to contact the OpenBazaar team and see how they feel about the use of a trusted third party to create accounts to be used during transactions or see if they have any better suggestions(I'm very new to all this). Sorry it wasn't better new. Hopefully someone will point out why I'm wrong.

EDIT: it looks like the escrow feature for steem is another potential avenue. We just need to communicate with OpenBazaar and see if this is an okay way to implement GenerateMultisigScript