Following up here on questions from @RobertL regarding the 3Node marketplace and certified node sales.
The marketplace is English only and might not provide a great experience for customers around the world. What can vendors do?
Vendors are free to sell nodes via their own websites. We’re happy to discuss a way we can provide visibility to vendor sites through the ThreeFold web presence.
Isn’t the marketplace centralized?
Yes, the priority when developing the marketplace was to provide a venue for more vendors to offer nodes in the simplest way possible, and that meant a relatively centralized solution administered by the ThreeFold team.
At this point, we’d love to see a decentralized effort take its place, but the team doesn’t have resources to devote to developing something new.
What about the commission paid by vendors and the requirement that the team generate boot images for each certified node?
This is how we’ve structured the certification program so far. There’s a trust circuit connecting the ThreeFold organization, the vendor, and the customer. Likewise, there’s a value transfer that generates some revenue for the TF org.
Is there a better way to structure these relationships and the value exchange? Should anyone be able to offer certified nodes without intervention from the team or additional expense in the form of commission?
I don’t have all the answers, but if there’s a compelling case for changing the way we handle certified node sales, of course I think we should consider it.
