Ukrainian DMarket restarts on a new platform. This is no longer a marketplace

The Ukrainian company DMarket, which develops technologies for the monetization of in-game items, has introduced a new platform for digital goods trade and exchange. DMarket switched to the exchange model from the marketplace model. The company explained that the characteristics of the old platform did not allow it to be developed in this direction.

What changed?

• Now DMarket users can not only buy and sell but also exchange items without raising funds both within the same game and between different games.
• Players also got the opportunity to make offers to buy even those items that have not yet been put up for sale by their owners. The owner of such an item can sell it instantly at a suggested price.
• Game developers can monetize their games long before their release thanks to a pre-order system: the developers offer players to buy items from their game on DMarket before launching the game.
• The new platform takes advantage of various artificial intelligence capabilities, including data mining and neural networks, to increase and strengthen gaming communities.

What happened to an old platform?

As the company explained to AIN.UA, the previous version of the platform was built according to a model close to the marketplace or the traditional market where sellers place offers, buyers look through the items, make their choice, and a transaction occurs, which is reflected in the blockchain.

The business model of the new platform is closer to the exchange or stock exchange: sellers create Ask sell orders, buyers make Bid bets that occur in real-time, and the transaction happens for the best pair and is executed in the container of one transaction in Distributed Ledger. DMarket uses distributed ledger technology (DLT) to protect every transaction on the platform.

“This model requires a technical architecture capable of processing a huge number of operations in real-time, which excluded the possibility of the evolutionary development of the platform,” the company explained.

Why this is needed?

“We collected an incredible amount of skin trading data and analyzed countless expert and user reviews to launch this platform,” said Volodymyr Panchenko, CEO of DMarket.

For each item in the user’s inventory, the new DMarket holds an instant auction of bids and offers the best instant sale price. Also, the new platform implements the ability to exchange up to 100 items from the user’s inventory for 100 items in the window, even if they are from another game.

As a result, both the seller and the buyer receive the best transaction conditions and a guarantee of the correct transaction in the Distributed Ledger.

The first version of the platform was released in March 2018. According to Panchenko, it took a year to develop a new platform. The DMarket team is currently working on updates, including exclusive features for those who supported the platform during the creation phase.