Monero is already posed to overtake bitcoin in actual use, but the monero economy is not circular, with monero frequently traded back to BTC/fiat after just 1 purchase.
While three is plenty of ecommerce software that can use Monero, there is none that pair well with it's decentralized and anonymous nature.
We believe adding this missing marketplace layer will make a defacto home for the Monero community and economy to grow and thrive.
With no smart contract woo, Merkato is backed by the p2p gossip network Onionr.
Merkato will be usable either with a local Onionr+Monero node or remotely from the browser.
All storefronts, listings, and associated data are encrypted and private by default, and must be published to a decentralized directory for the public to discover.
Further, their visibility in the directory can be filtered by their distance in the web of trust graph, for example by seeing only stores that your friends or friends of friends have marked good.
There are no centralized servers gatekeeping access or market availability.
The only necessary parties are the seller and buyer, as was the case for economies for a millenia.