I have been watching the new Open Bazaar 2.0 with anticipation since they announced Tor support.
It is not perfect though. This 2.0 uses third parties for search results, which is better than how it works now but it also means the search engines can censor what people see.
I asked about this in their subreddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBazaar/comments/6tgacx/how_does_search_work_in_20/
As you see, their lead backend dev says that each search engine can provide any results they want, but the main search engines will censor listings.
So it is time to create a search engine for Open Bazaar that is DNM friendly. It would censor only CP or listings that promote violence. It would need to be run as a hidden service.
I have no intention to monetize. Its only purpose would be to mirror the network to give people an accurate picture of all listings. This is a free speech issue. I want to set this up and let it run without manual interference as much as possible. It is a community service.
If no one offers help I could pay a small amount of XMR for your time, but I am hoping this is a community project.
I am a developer but focus on front-end and am completely unfamiliar with search. I've used Tor for a few years but have not run a hidden service. Can you help me?
I'm not sure how much time I could commit but I'd like to help. Been messing around with developing apps/sites on the Tor network and would like to work on something a bit more in depth. Any idea what language the back end of Open Bazaar is in? Do they have an API by any chance? Haven't looked into it too much honestly.
Edit. It's fairly easy to set up a hidden service. The hard part will be the app, especially if Open Bazaar has no API.
Any thoughts on hosting? I've only hosted stuff on raspberry pi's with Tor