Introduction

Currently TMW has no built-in system for facilitating commerce. This is a collection of ideas for helping to realize such a system. First, let's start with use-case scenarios.

Use-case scenarios

Scenario 1

I am trying to acquire an item. I want to see what the offers are, so others must be able to offer to sell items for specific payment. If I don't like any of the offers, or can't find one, I can make my own offer for something in exchange for the item I need.

Scenario 2

I want to sell items of type X. If there are offers of money or something else I like, in exchange for X, I can accept the best one and make an immediate sell. If no offers look promising, I can make an offer of my choosing.

Concept

So basically, this system will consist of a way to place or accept a "trade offer". A trade offer has all the features of a normal trade: the exchange can include money or items on either side of it.

On the server side, a database of trade offers will reside.

On the client side, a person, the offerer, can make a trade offer. The offered items will be immediately taken from the offerer and put in the trade offer, which will be added to the database on the server side. A person, called the acceptor, will come along and accept a trade offer. The acceptor's paid items will then be immediately extracted from the accepter and mailed to the respective offerer, while the items in the trade offer will be given to the acceptor.

Advantages

• This is a very simple system, in that a simple trade offer can be used to either buy or sell -- no need to implement buying and selling separately, since the only difference between the two is what is exchanged.

Disadvantages

• Doesn't provide for auctioning.