Despite the fact that anyone can start a market to sell anything they want on the BitHalo, David Zimbeck, the platform’s creator, says he plans on limiting the sale of illicit goods to reduce his own liability.

David Zimbeck the creator says that BitHalo is a peer-to-peer platform that lets anyone start a market and begin selling whatever goods they wish. The markets exist on a network comprised of numerous computers with the software client installed, similar to how torrents work. Like the internet itself, there’s no central server for the site’s administrators or law enforcement to shut down; if one node gets taken out, the markets live on.

The BitHalo network is currently unencrypted, nor does it hide the IP addresses of users like the Tor network does, although Zimbeck told, he plans on encrypting the platform once it becomes fully operational. Messages on BitHalo are secured with Bit message, however, an open source messaging service that passes messages continually through the peer-to-peer network, even after they reach their intended target, to hide their origin and destination. It also has PGP functionality to boot.

Should the network become more anonymous, BitHalo appears ripe for wrong dealers to sell their wares, and it will only become more appealing.

“I support freedom, but as far as the solution that I’m proposing goes, I want people to know that I will do what I have to make sure that it’s clean. I’m not going to ruin my life just to make a couple people happy.” David Zibeck

The key attraction to a decentralized market like BitHalo is the lack of a central authority mediating Bitcoin transactions between buyers and sellers, a set-up that’s believed to have allowed the administrators of Evolution.

BitHalo accomplishes this through smart contracts between buyers and sellers that automatically release funds only if both parties confirm that a purchased good and payment have been received. Contracts are enforced with a double deposit system that requires both parties to put money into a joint account that can only be unlocked if both buyer and seller sign off. The idea is that if a seller gets the bright idea to rip off a customer, they can’t, because they’ll lose money, too.

BitHalo supports alternative cryptocurrencies, as well—with the flip of a switch, BitHalo turns into BlackHalo, allowing users to trade in an altcoin called Blackcoin. A sister client called BitBay that trades in the BitBay cryptocurrency, which David Zimbeck is personally backing, also entered public beta testing on Tuesday.

Indeed, you can never fully control a truly decentralized system. So, what is there to do? “What we could so is run it through a server—if the server goes down, it’s still decentralized, because you can still access and use the markets to their full power,” Zimbeck said.

BitHalo, BlackHalo, and BitBay certainly aren’t the first markets to attempt a decentralized approach, but they are the first to actually make it to public beta and do away with any transaction mediators in a single stroke. Shadow, another hyped decentralized market, is still closed for development.