How Qortal Revolutionized E-Commerce

With the arrival of Q-Shop in the Qortal ecosystem, the Qortal community witnessed the upheaval of another major internet industry: e-commerce. This may sound like a hyperbolic overstatement, but this blog will seek to explain why it’s not. The ramifications of the advent of Web3 and blockchain technology continue to disrupt the current ways of working on the normal internet, and with every new Q-App built on Qortal, the disruptions will continue. Let’s begin!

The current state of e-commerce on the internet can be summed up in one word: Amazon. This may seem like another exaggeration, but with Amazon controlling a whopping 40% of the market share for online purchases, it hardly is one.¹

Amazon has become a giant in the e-commerce space²

There is no doubt that Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, can be lauded as one of the greatest entrepreneurs of the 21st century, from launching a lowly book-selling business to capturing the entire e-commerce market in three short decades. However, this entrepreneurial prowess cannot hide the fact that there is always room for improvement, especially in the realm of technology. Amazon has mastered the art of simplicity, speed, and efficacy for its customers, but at what cost?

Its centralized approach to e-commerce means all the sellers listing products on its website are subject to between 6% and 15% in fees of the product's sale price, depending on the category.³ This doesn’t even include the monthly fees for having an account. Other e-commerce websites such as Ebay or Etsy also have similar fee structures.⁴ Can you imagine the struggles startups selling physical products must face, having to suffer such costs, on top of the normal taxes they must pay to their respective governments? Every dollar counts when you’re starting a company, and these fees are definitely not favorable for new companies to launch.

Another major issue with the centralized nature of all e-commerce sites on the internet is that sellers are at the mercy of their iron fists in regards to censorship and deplatforming. For example, a book publisher was recently deplatformed from Amazon for selling a book of a slightly more controversial nature.⁵ Furthermore, big payment processors used by some e-commerce websites have a definite list of prohibited businesses from using their services, as well as people living in many countries around the world.⁶ Needless to say, both buyers and sellers are not completely free when dealing with these e-commerce websites.

Certain payment processors explicitly block certain types of businesses, as well as users from certain countries, from using their services⁷

Buyers are no better off in the freedom department. It has been proven time and time again that big tech companies, from which Amazon is a part of, harvest and study customer data to their benefit. This data is taken without prior consent from their users, despite the tiny font in the terms and conditions they sign when creating an account. They claim they collect data on users' online activities, preferences, and purchasing habits to deliver personalized advertisements.8 Who knows how this data is really studied, and by whom. It may provide a better user experience, but from a privacy perspective, it is absolutely awful! But what if there was an alternative? A marketplace where sellers keep 100% of their earnings, transactions are completely private, and no central authority has control over your business? That’s exactly what Q-Shop delivers.

Q-Shop is a marketplace which facilitates transactions between buyers and sellers on Qortal. Sellers can sell both products and services, listing their items in either QORT or ARRR (which is a privacy coin).

There are already many shops built on Q-Shop at the moment⁹

By leveraging the power of the Qortal blockchain, sellers benefit from a peer-to-peer network where there are no middlemen! That means they are in complete control of their shops, and can do whatever they so choose with them. This means that they can rest easily that their shop will not be taken down for selling a certain product, or hacked by any ambitious hackers on the normal internet. Hacking is impossible on Qortal, as user data is not stored on any centralized server, but spread out amongst all the nodes on the network. Beyond this, all orders on Q-Shop are totally encrypted, adding another layer of privacy to Q-Shop! Sellers looking to be extra private can also sell their items in ARRR, one of the most private cryptocurrencies that have ever been created!

But most important of all, sellers retain 100% of their revenues which they earn on Q-Shop (excluding tiny transaction fees for publishing their shops and items). Just that, in and of itself, is such a gigantic leap forward from e-commerce on the normal internet! Launching new startups would become easier than ever, with no red tape or geographic boundaries in place to hinder the process. Also, banking regulations become a thing of the past, as Qortal’s QORT coin becomes commonplace for all transactions in this parallel economy.

To conclude, Qortal’s Q-Shop will offer both buyers and sellers a new innovative way to transact in the Web3 space. Gone are the astronomical fees, censorship and data harvesting that are commonplace on the e-commerce websites of the normal internet. Instead, Qortians can benefit from an ecosystem which is built to be fully decentralized, and peer-to-peer, for every, single, block. And the fact that these e-commerce shops will thrive on Qortal also means they’ll be able to leverage other cool functionality of Qortal’s ecosystem, such as encrypted chats on Q-Chat, encrypted mails on Q-Mail, and a decentralized trade portal to go from QORT to 6 different other coins very easily using Q-Trade.

So while the current e-commerce giants are thriving on the normal internet, it shouldn’t stop innovation, especially when it comes to respecting digital privacy, and favoring a more egalitarian approach to doing business. The sky-high fees for participating on their websites, and financial gatekeeping, harm both buyers and sellers. These problems are solved by Qortal’s Q-Shop. So if you’re looking for a blockchain project that pushes boundaries, with a project offering real utility and solving the real problems with e-commerce, then Qortal is your project. Install it, set up your shop, and start selling—free from corporate interference!

1. eMarketer. (2024, February 15). Amazon will surpass 40% of US ecommerce sales this year, despite competition in grocery, home improvement. eMarketer. https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-will-surpass-40-of-us-ecommerce-sales-this-year

2. Geddes, R. (2019). Amazon fulfillment center [Image]. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/when-amazon-went-from-big-to-unbelievably-big/582097/

3. Amazon. (n.d.). Pricing. Amazon Seller Central. https://sell.amazon.com/pricing

4. Sellercloud. (n.d.). What are marketplace fees? Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Etsy. Sellercloud. https://sellercloud.com/blog/what-are-marketplace-fees-amazon-ebay-walmart-etsy/

5. Haring, B. (2021, February 27). Amazon under fire for erasing from its sales site book critical of transgender movement. Deadline. https://deadline.com/2021/02/amazon-under-fire-for-removing-transgender-study-1234702507/

6. Stripe. (n.d.). Restricted businesses. Stripe. https://stripe.com/en-bg/legal/restricted-businesses

7. Whop. (2025, February). Why was my Stripe account suspended/restricted? [Image]. Whop. https://whop.com/blog/stripe-account-closed/

8. McKinnon, J. D. (2024, February 12). Social media companies lack adequate privacy controls, FTC report says. The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/business/telecom/social-media-cos-lack-adequate-privacy-controls-ftc-report-says-3f5b68db

9. Qortal Project. (n.d.). Q-Shop Homepage [Screenshot]. Qortal Hub.