🤚The Invisible Hand

Centralized entities can manipulate prices, set fees, curate visibility, track sales data, and can even copy and censor products, replacing well-performing products with their own versions. Acting in self-interest in a centralized market means using the most popular platforms, like Amazon, which leads to further centralization. It also means following Amazon’s rules and avoiding its implicit threats. This forces sellers to make adjustments that increase the time and effort needed to create and deploy their products, leading to higher consumer prices. Adjusting for fees also raises prices, reduces income, and leads to more dependence on the platform and, therefore, more centralization.

Web3 decentralization reintroduces the concept of the Invisible Hand, creating a fair and transparent environment for buyers and sellers. Individuals acting in self-interest in a decentralized market will instead lead to positive outcomes. For example, marketplace fees used to fund SHOPX ecosystem development can be put to vote. Equilibrium will be achieved naturally: the average seller will not want to pay more than they can bear but will not pay less than is required to improve the platform they need to survive. This will lead to more active collective participation in platform development and a careful balance between profit and improvement.

Voting and ecosystem fees, along with blockchain, code, smart contracts, and AI, solve a few key issues that free markets have always faced:

• The Tragedy of the Commons: Because all participants use the platform daily, there is a strong incentive to maintain and improve it, and the $SHOPX license token on the blockchain gives the community the tools to engage in fair and decentralized governance to this end. If the ecosystem becomes imbalanced, there is more incentive to participate and improve the platform for those negatively affected.

• Unequal Access to Information: AI can help collect, organize, and present information more effectively, providing users and the community at large with the insights needed to make informed decisions. The blockchain itself ensures transparency in transactions and product histories, making information universally accessible and verifiable.

• Regulation and Fairness: Certain regulations can be coded into algorithms and smart contracts to automatically ensure compliance with standards and fair practices. Smart contracts can also automate and enforce agreements, reducing the need for traditional regulatory oversight. Using the platform forces compliance as the rules are baked into the code.

The solutions to these problems have not been possible until now. SHOPX will create the first truly decentralized free market that resists the weaknesses and imbalances that arise from a lack of robust and fair data management capabilities.