Is this a working model for a decentralized and anonymous parcel service?
a buyer wants to buy a big cup of noodles. He contacts the seller and they agree on a price: $110 to have his big cup of noodles delivered to his door step.
Both buyer and seller both put in $110 into multisig address simultaniously via an atomic transaction.
Distributor1 pays seller $90 in exchange for package.
Distributor2 pays distributor1 $95 in exchange for package.
Distributor3 pays Distributor2 $100 in exchange for package.
Distributor4 pays distributor3 $110 in exchange for package.
Unknown to the network, distributor4 is the buyer. The network also does not know if the seller was a distributor.
- Seller gets $220 when buyer releases escrow and stake funds for payment.
Alternatively: 7. Distributor3 refuses item, distributor2 takes a $100 loss for destroying/buying/stealing the package.
- Buyer and seller return $110 to each other. Buyer is fully refunded, and the seller made a profit.
The only issue/attack vector I see with this is the following: self damaging packages.
Seller ships a "time-bomb" - so the seller get the $90, and their $110 refund. So they profit at the loss of whatever distributor was holding the package while it self-destructed.
How would this exploit be fixed? It seems very difficult to fix the self damaging packages exploit and it seems like this attack would work to exploit UPS/USPS if the package had insurance on it.
Also: this is only the backbone of a decentralized parcel system. You'd also need to have the packages have multiple layers from hard to counterfit/unique wrapping paper layers. Each distributor would verify the outside, and take it off to reveal a new outside layer the next distributor would verify. In between each layer would exist a GPG encrypted message for each distributor for further instructions on where to take the package. Extra layers could be used to conceal end user. (I.e I am supposed to ship this but no one is claiming this new layer)
This idea would work like http://GetKanga.com but it'd be more time consuming and require higher distributor involvement which comes as a trade off for completely anonymous and decentralized parcel system.
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