Glossary of marketplace assessment terms

Plain definitions of the terms used across this library. Where a term carries a common misunderstanding, the definition says so rather than leaving it implied.

Custody and payment

2 of 3 multisig

An escrow address that needs two of three keys before funds can move, with buyer, vendor and market holding one each. No single party can act alone.

Pooled wallet

A market design where deposits sit in an account the operator controls and user balances are database entries rather than reserved coins. The whole pool shares one fate.

Finalise early

Releasing payment before goods arrive. It hands over the money and closes the dispute route in the same action.

Public ledger

A permanent readable record of every transaction, produced by Bitcoin and Litecoin, and the reason settlement choice outlasts every other decision.

Stealth address

A one time destination generated per Monero payment, so the address recorded on the chain is never the recipient real one.

Access and infrastructure

Onion address

A fifty six character Tor address ending in .onion. Copy it rather than typing it, and verify it on the login screen.

Mirror

An additional onion address reaching the same market. Several kept live at once means a flood on one does not close the market.

Exit

A market ending with user funds still held. The sequence is recognisable in advance, and the exposure is decided by how much was left sitting there.

Reputation and measurement

Vendor bond

A payment a seller puts at risk to be listed, which signals to buyers that the account has something to lose.

Selection bias

The distortion in feedback caused by only unusually good or unusually bad experiences being reported, which is why averages describe the edges.

Survivorship bias

The distortion in rankings caused by only surviving markets being available to rank, which makes age look more predictive than it is.

Dispute arbitration

The process where a market casts the deciding vote between buyer and vendor. Its outcomes cannot be audited from outside, so this library leaves it unscored.

Terms marked as unscored in the assessments, such as dispute arbitration, are explained on the criteria page.