Use the Correct Safex Wallet to Buy Marketplace Items
This article has been prepared to help guide users of the Safex Marketplace and improve understanding of making purchases with a Safex Wallet.
There are currently 2 GUI wallets capable of buying goods/services on the Safex Marketplace, and this seems like an appropriate time to explain the parameters and limitations for making purchases on the Safex Marketplace. You can't just grab any item, buy it, and expect the seller to get notified correctly. So the whole concept of Safex is to have a "platform" that people can build their own experience on. That means both Amazon and EBay, for example, could build on the Safex platform and sell....but never would the two list/show/buy/sell each other's offers.
It's possible a seller chooses to list on both Amazon and eBay, but has to go to each company to get approved to list and such.
The two wallets currently available are:
- TWM Wallet, used to purchase items from Safex.Market. A curated marketplace focussed at onboarding existing Amazon FBA Merchants, and integrating with their existing systems to automate the sales and delivery process. Safex Market has millions of dollars worth of products offered for sale.
- Big Box Store Wallet (link to 101 article), used to purchase items from Big Box Store Fronts. Offers the ability for anyone to sell items, either by being approved to offer items for sale on a curated Store Front (link to 201 article), or by independently setting up their own Store Front (link to 301 article). Big Box Store is a community initiative, and offerings will hopefully grow as adoption of the wallet does.
Safex is a Protocol (or a toolkit) that you can build marketing experiences on. In the same way that lots of different businesses exist on the internet protocol, lots of separate business can exist on the safex blockchain protocol
Want to sell? In the rest of the world, you are forced to ask someone else to handle your store or your payments. With Safex, you can control both, without needing to ask anyone. In particular, with the Big Box Store Front software, anyone can set up their own virtual shopping mall.
Whilst all items offered for sale get created on the Safex blockchain, merchants choose which wallet/s shows their offerings. This seems like an appropriate time to explain the parameters and limitations for making purchases on the Safex Marketplace.
It should be noted that just because a product exists on the Safex blockchain, it won't necessarily be available for sale in the TWM Wallet or Big Box Store wallet. The possible reasons for this will become clear as you read the rest of this article.
Bare Bones Blockchain
Before we jump into the GUI wallet usage, let us remember that there’s a CLI wallet released as part of the safexcore repository for the Safex Blockchain. Whilst never intended to be used as a mainstream wallet for purchasing goods on Safex Marketplace, it can, and has, been done.
Shortly after the Marketplace code went live, and before a GUI Wallet was released, several members of the Safex community listed items for sale via the cli wallet, including Dan’s commemorative teacup, the symbolic first item sold on the Safex Marketplace.
The CLI wallet has limited practical use for mainstream adoption, as there’s no graphics capability (to display pictures of products), has only a raw description text block (no easy-to-read layout for product descriptions, etc), and doesn’t have any person-to-person chat function (to allow buyers and sellers to communicate). It simply contains the full suite of functions (marketplace/staking/sending coins) that the blockchain can recognise.
And whilst the author has indeed used the CLI wallet to make a marketplace purchase, stake tokens, and send coins, there’s no denying the benefits of a much easier point-and-click, enter-data-into-convenient-fields GUI wallet.
It should be noted that the CLI purchase was made of an item that was correspondingly listed for sale via the CLI wallet.
Shoppers should never use the CLI wallet to purchase Safex.Market or Big Box Store listings, nor any other items that may get listed in the future via other GUI wallet products.
Benefits of the GUI Wallet
User-friendly GUI wallets are now the established norm for mainstream interaction with blockchains, whether it be Safex, Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any other blockchain. To that end, both the TWM Wallet and Big Box Store Wallet was developed and released as part of the Safex.Market and Big Box suite of software products, respectively.
A key component of the TWM Wallet is the 2nd layer TWM-API software, which allows for off-blockchain encrypted P2P communication (including transmission of shopper/shipping details to the merchant), product display/removal capabilities and geofencing, which allows merchants to limit product visibility to only their specific geographic target market.
Likewise, the Big Box Store ecosystem uses its own 2nd layer messaging API.
The 2 messaging systems are not interchangeable (just like you wouldn't use the Amazon website to leave a message to an eBay seller).
Displaying Products For Sale in the Big Box Store Wallet
Any product listed for sale in the Big Box Store Wallet must first have a listing created on the blockchain, and then subsequently have that listing approved for display via a Big Box Store Front API. This 2-step approach allows merchants to check the blockchain item listing details for accuracy (eg. inspect the Offer on the Listings page) before allowing the Big Box Store Front they’re connected with to display it for sale. It also allows merchants to remove items from sale without the need to send a blockchain transaction, as they can simply use the API to stop the product being displayed in the Big Box Store Wallet.
This ability to remove items from sale using the API, rather than via blockchain transactions, allows merchants who list their products across multiple ecommerce platforms to react quickly (or even automate the process) and “pull” products from sale if stock levels are depleted, and can simply “wake up” the listings once stock levels have been renewed.
Note: Merchants can also edit their item listings on the blockchain, including stock levels, if they choose to.
Future GUI Wallets
As other Safex Marketplace GUI Wallets are developed and released, each will most likely come with their own API. Additionally, it is possible that wallets could be released with customizable APIs, where merchants release their own Safex wallet app that only shows their own products and nobody else's. An independently-operated Big Box Store Front could be seen as fitting this description.
Some merchants may also choose to list their products across several different Wallets and/or Store Front APIs.
The important thing for shoppers to understand is that they should only buy a product using the wallet upon which the item is listed for sale.
To put it even simpler - if the item displays in the wallet you're using, and you aren’t using a VPN to spoof your location to another region or country, then you can buy it. For example, if you live in Australia, DO NOT set your VPN to somewhere in the USA and then view the products in the wallet - you will be seeing products intended for shipping to USA customers, not Australia.
Buying a product not intended for your region will likely result in loss of your SFX, as the item will never arrive.
Guidelines for Buying Products on the Safex Marketplace
- Do NOT use the CLI wallet to purchase products.
- Do NOT change your geolocation via VPN, as you may end up seeing products in the wallet that can’t be delivered to your address.
- Do NOT tamper with the wallet API settings to see products that weren’t intended to be sold via that wallet.
- Have sufficient SFX, in the correct sized outputs, to make the purchase.
- Complete the necessary steps to buying the desired product.
Abide by the above guidelines, and you should have an enjoyable experience shopping on the Safex Marketplace.