Civ Kit: A P2P Marketplace Ecosystem from Paxful's Co-Founder
Civilization Kit is a digital system for peer-to-peer marketplaces, capable of accommodating thousands of platforms for trading Bitcoin and a variety of other assets.
Civ Kit delivers the tools necessary to build public marketplaces resistant to censorship and capable of accommodating all forms of trade. These tools are designed for developers and entrepreneurs keen to establish their own markets.
The project is led by a team of Bitcoin enthusiasts — Nicholas Gregory, Ray Youssef, and Antoine Riard. While still under development, a detailed whitepaper explaining its peer-to-peer system can be found on GitHub.
Civ Kit Features
Civilization Kit utilizes the Nostr protocol as its foundation architecture, serving as a defensive measure against censorship. This protocol is upheld by relay servers that receive and transmit messages amongst users.
At the heart of Civ Kit will be the Lightning Network, a Layer2 blockchain designed for the Bitcoin network, ensuring user anonymity without any delay in communication.
To ensure user privacy and security, Civ Kit will employ conditional escrow transactions, moderation, and a Know-Your-Peer (KYP) oracle — a more personal alternative to the traditional KYC (Know Your Customer) process.
Furthermore, the project will benefit from the introduction of Plug and Play technology, crafted to streamline device configuration within computers and other technological devices. In a final touch, Civ Kit will integrate a decentralized identification system, developed by the company TBD, which was founded by ex-Twitter director Jack Dorsey.
The system is underpinned by a network of decentralized servers, free from third-party influence. These servers won't require high-resource computations and will boast low barriers to entry. The founders of Civ Kit envisage it as a platform with high throughput, minimal bottlenecks, and the potential to scale to manage billions of transactions every second.
The Genesis of Civ Kit
Civ Kit was created in response to the temporary closure of the peer-to-peer service Paxful due to regulatory hurdles and legal disputes between its founders, Ray Youssef and Artur Schaback.
Schaback has accused Youssef of unjustly removing him from his position, withholding information about business transactions, and being subjected to fraudulent financial transfers.
In 2015, the trading platform Paxful made its debut. The service allowed its users to trade freely, sans any centralized monitoring. It provided a platform where Bitcoin could be swapped for fiat currencies and other assets, garnering considerable popularity in regions like Nigeria and Kenya.
As noted by Civ Kit co-founder Ray Youssef, his fresh venture has the potential to surpass Paxful's achievements. He believes that the new project can enable anyone to establish their decentralized market rooted in the Bitcoin network, which will then form part of the Civ Kit ecosystem.
