Vessal—Looking for Feedback! (vessal.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by connorb23i@lemm.ee to c/monero@monero.town

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Hi all,

I'm Connor, founder of Vessal, and wanted to (1) share with the group and (2) collect any feedback or suggestions you all may have.

Briefly, Vessal aims to make transportation private and secure. In some ways, it can be equated to a "VPN for transportation."

We are still relatively in our infancy, and therefore may be a little clunky sometimes as far as usability. Of course, we are always striving to improve!

Thanks for your time and taking a look, and again, we appreciate any feedback or suggestions you may have.

Connor

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[-] itsmect@monero.town 3 points 2 weeks ago

What is your target audience or use case? Because the obvious choice would be illegal items, which are excluded by your TOS. And while privacy enthusiasts are willing to spend extra, your asking price is too steep for casual use.

I noticed the pricing page is entirely dollar nominated, with the only payment option listed "cash on delivery", listing a bunch of typical payment options. Monero is only mentioned as a feature on the usage and FAQ tab, and both are easy to miss. Initially I wondered why you were posting here if you only accept paypal and such.

[-] baz@monero.town 3 points 2 weeks ago

DMCA Safe Harbor doesn't apply to the physical world. I think its a great idea but, memorize some good lawyer's numbers.

[-] connorb23i@lemm.ee 2 points 2 weeks ago

Thank you @baz@monero.town! Will take your suggestion into account.

[-] connorb23i@lemm.ee 2 points 2 weeks ago

Thank you for the feedback! And that makes sense, I have received multiple comments on it being hard to understand what payment methods are accepted.

Target audience is privacy enthusiasts, and the pricing was/is a concern of ours. We ultimately want to decrease it as low as possible while in turn achieving more volume.

I really appreciate your time and sharing your thoughts, would you mind if I message you directly on some items?

[-] itsmect@monero.town 3 points 2 weeks ago

I prefer public discussion. If you must reach me privately, please send me a simplex invite, the lemmy chat is not encrypted.

[-] connorb23i@lemm.ee 2 points 2 weeks ago

Got it, may do that in the future then, however for now will keep it here; we added a line as well on the Pricing page signaling only XMR is accepted, do you think that provides adequate clarity?

[-] itsmect@monero.town 3 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah just say you accept either prepaid with Monero (XMR) or using the cash-on-delivery option. A link to getmonero.org in the FAQ would be appreciated, but is not required.

[-] connorb23i@lemm.ee 1 points 2 weeks ago

Done!

[-] antidote@monero.town 3 points 2 weeks ago

Yo wtf? You do realize that when you go live someone will send drugs through your service?
At that point the alphabet boys will jump on you as their next favorite low-hanging fruit?
I hope you know how be and stay anonymous...

[-] connorb23i@lemm.ee 2 points 2 weeks ago

Much appreciated for the feedback; anything illegal is against our terms of service:

Prohibited Items: Do not transport illegal, hazardous, or restricted items.

We are very much the same in regards to a VPN—routing, relaying, delivering, etc. packets from an origin to a destination.

[-] jet@hackertalks.com 2 points 2 weeks ago

You're going to become fast friends with the postal inspector. They will most likely require you to maintain a list of every sender and receiver.

Ignoring that, let's compare this to the standard I don't want you to know where I live strategy: a post office box. Let's say a streamer or some famous YouTuber who doesn't want people to actually have their home address.

Anybody can send to a post office box, they just need the address. It's not entirely clear, but your service would require both the sender and receiver to have an account and relationship with you.

The privacy conscious person cannot take packages directly home from the post office, they need to be scanned for trackers, air tags etc, or opened in a neutral location. Your service would send directly to a destination address, so a single air tag would destroy all privacy, unless the destination was a PO box, but at which point what is the customer benefiting from?

I think it's an interesting service, but I don't see it working. The closest I would see it to is virtual post mail, or other virtual mailbox services. They scan mail when it comes in, and then email or reship that to another destination up to you. That's kind of the privacy arbitrage layer. Otherwise there's the post office boxes for people who want to receive without giving away their location.

If two people want to have a transaction without any third party knowing, shipping it via the post is always difficult. Labels are scanned at every office. And I think your service will quickly have tracking requirements put onto it, quite frankly your early adopters will almost certainly only be sending illegal material.

[-] connorb23i@lemm.ee 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Thank you @jet@hackertalks.com! Really appreciative of you giving your time and laying out your thoughts.

I'll address your points one by one below:

Ignoring that, let’s compare this to the standard I don’t want you to know where I live strategy: a post office box. Let’s say a streamer or some famous YouTuber who doesn’t want people to actually have their home address.

Anybody can send to a post office box, they just need the address. It’s not entirely clear, but your service would require both the sender and receiver to have an account and relationship with you.

Correct, and I see your point. I think the main draw here is that currently our service is ephemeral, while a PO box is persistent. We do plan to add some persistent options for users in the future, but that's a discussion for another time.

Additionally, once agreed upon (i.e., within reason), we are willing to meet the Receiver wherever; whether it is at their home, a public brick-and-mortar—we are able to execute the final leg of the delivery on the Receiver's terms.

The privacy conscious person cannot take packages directly home from the post office, they need to be scanned for trackers, air tags etc, or opened in a neutral location. Your service would send directly to a destination address, so a single air tag would destroy all privacy, unless the destination was a PO box, but at which point what is the customer benefiting from?

We have thought about this, and I think this can always be a potential issue for the Receiver under any circumstance. It's preferable to have an established thread of trust between the Sender and Receiver, and if there is not, I would think the Receiver would meet in a public place and do exactly what you mentioned.

I think it’s an interesting service, but I don’t see it working. The closest I would see it to is virtual post mail, or other virtual mailbox services. They scan mail when it comes in, and then email or reship that to another destination up to you. That’s kind of the privacy arbitrage layer. Otherwise there’s the post office boxes for people who want to receive without giving away their location.

If two people want to have a transaction without any third party knowing, shipping it via the post is always difficult. Labels are scanned at every office. And I think your service will quickly have tracking requirements put onto it, quite frankly your early adopters will almost certainly only be sending illegal material.

Agreed, there are many unknowns regarding the post, and I appreciate your candidness.

As for remailers (I think virtual mailbox services are kind of a different animal altogether as far as privacy), the main benefits that make us stand out are (1) the ephemeral/persistence use case as touched on earlier, (2) the existence of relays, and (3) ensuring both the Sender and Receiver's privacy and security throughout the entire process from points A to Z.

Thanks again for taking the time and providing valuable feedback!