Merchants
Merchants are participants who continuously provide liquidity to the marketplace.
What they do
- Publish digitally signed advertisements to buy or sell stablecoins for local fiat
- Choose fixed pricing or floating pricing against an oracle reference rate
- Support one or more countries and payment methods
- Manage availability across online, offline and vacation states
- Verify that fiat payment arrived, then release escrow
- Renew advertisements before they expire
Stake
Merchant registration requires staking OPEN. It discourages spam, provides economic accountability, and sets the merchant's initial advertisement capacity. Importantly, merchant stake does not back individual trades — settlement is secured by the escrow vault. Staking also does not grant reputation, which must be earned through completed trades.
How they earn
The spread on their own pricing. Merchants pay rather than receive protocol fees: an advertisement carries a listing fee in OPEN, and the arbitration deposit on a disputed trade comes from the merchant's vault. Neither is charged yet — both are specified and read by no instruction, so advertising currently costs nothing.
Requirements
- Register a merchant profile before advertising
- Stake OPEN; capacity scales with stake, reputation, account age, trade history and dispute rate
- Declare supported countries and payment methods