Civ Kit: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Market System

Abstract. The Bitcoin protocol enables a global store of value system without a single trusted third party issuing or holding the funds. Participants are only required to have access to a standard computer using a broadband connection. As a second layer, the Lightning protocol enables fast, instant, and cheap value transfers between all participants of the Bitcoin system by rolling out a decen- tralized network of payment channels. While those protocols enable global value transfers, they do not allow global trading with the same properties. We propose a new peer-to-peer electronic market system, which enables censorship-resistant and permissionless trading between users of the global Bitcoin system. This design builds on top of the new Nostr protocol for its peer-to-peer order book and relies on the Bitcoin blockchain as a source of truth for its Web-of-Stakes market ranking paradigm. Market trades are locked under Bitcoin contracts to avoid reliance on trusted third parties for dispute arbitration. All market nodes are incentivized by privacy-preserving service credentials backed by Bitcoin payments. This market system should enable global trade of any kind of item all over the world: fiat currencies, goods. services.