The race is on to grab usernames for bitcoin powered decentralized marketplace, OpenBazaar

Centralized services such as eBay, Amazon, and Alibaba have come to dominate the world of online commerce. OpenBazaar offers a different approach, connecting buyers and sellers directly. The open source project is creating a decentralized network for peer to peer commerce, using Bitcoin for all payments. Instead of visiting a website, you download and install a program on your computer that directly connects you to other people looking to buy and sell goods and services, removing the middlemen altogether.

“Bitcoin gives people more control over their own money, and this fits in perfectly with OpenBazaar, a tool designed to give people back control over their own online trade.”
— – OpenBazaar

Every user that runs the OpenBazaar program, or client, creates a connection point, or node, in the networks infrastructure. Every node has a unique name, or ID, which allows it to communicate with other nodes. The ID is used to find stores on the network.

Users can navigate the network by putting the ID into a navigation bar within the client program. However, the ID is a random string of characters and isn’t very convenient. In order to make navigation simpler, a user can create their own short "handle," which is tied to their ID, and can be used like a domain name and an email address in the system, to find other people and to navigate between stores.

Although OpenBazaar users can name their storefront anything they want to, a unique handle is displayed directly underneath the store name. This provides customers an effortless way to validate the store, but also provides cybersquatters with an easy target.

Following a recent spike in interest, it may be a good time for businesses and individuals to reserve their preferred OpenBazaar handle now. The OpenBazaar Slack community has 1,985 people collaborating on the project, and Twitter followers just surpassed 7,750. The most recent testnet version of the OpenBazaar installer has been downloaded over 8,000 times in the last week, with more than 22,176 downloads since version 1.0 of the beta client debuted in December.

The development team has said that they’ll be taking down the current testnet version of the network, after assembling a new one for the final launch. This process will probably delete all user data, but reserving a handle now may be a wise option for those looking to open an OpenBazaar store at some point in the future, or for those that wish to protect a brand. The trick is that you don’t have to do it inside the OpenBazaar application at all.

Onename blockchain IDs are the only identity option for OpenBazaar right now, and will likely remain so for a while. The development team had planned to offer full Namecoin integration at launch, alongside Onename, but technical issues have prevented them from including the identity-providing altcoin at this point.

While more identity options are planned for future integration, handles inside the OpenBazaar marketplace should remain unique, even with multiple ID providers.

Those who want to reserve an OpenBazaar handle need to create an account with Onename, including a username with the exact same spelling as the desired OpenBazaar handle, and an email address. Extra data that proves who you are can be added too. The process is very simple, and a Onename profile can be useful for other reasons besides OpenBazaar.

“Users can create a personal or company profile and share their blockchain ID on their website, social media profiles, and business cards so others can easily find them online. Developers can integrate support for blockchain IDs to offer users password-less login, secure messaging, and granular control over data access and privacy. With a blockchain ID, users are in control of their online identity. Because blockchain IDs are decentralized, developers are free to pursue permissionless innovation.”
— – Onename

After telling Onename the email and password you want, a following screen asks for a username, and won’t let users pick one that already exists. It would be wise to pick a username here that reflects the business name of your future OpenBazaar store, or simply use your name if you plan on having multiple businesses using this identity.

Onename doesn’t ask for any official identification itself, so it’s easy to use a pseudonym. It does encourage you to connect your social media accounts, including Twitter, facebook, and Github, but those properties can be created to match a Onename account.

The problem of cybersquatters acquiring account names on the Onename platform is a real one, and Onename has not published any rules or FAQs addressing it, opting to simply make it harder for Onename users to contact each other, which makes cybersquatting harder to achieve. Creating multiple accounts is also possible, but each would need a unique email address.

After you’ve finished the sign-up process at Onename, and confirmed your email address with them, your OpenBazaar handle is secure. Even after the OpenBazaar testnet is wiped away, anyone trying to claim your OpenBazaar handle will not be able to verify it on Onename.

After the full, working version of OpenBazaar launches, verifying your handle should be a simple process. It involves telling Onename your Node ID, in a process similar to telling your domain registrar what your server’s IP address and nameservers are. Once Onename has that information it can take up to 12 hours to write it to the bitcoin blockchain, where OpenBazaar can see it and confirm that your handle is the correct one, using it from that point forwards.