Paddle makes auctioning goods and services to a global audience easy, with the use of bitcoin and the lightning network.
When placing a bid, you will be asked to pay a lightning invoice as a deposit.
The deposit is currently 1% of the bid amount, with a minimum of 500 sats and a maximum of 2,000,000 sats.
You will be refunded the deposit as soon as your bid is outbid. If you win the auction, Paddle
receives the deposit as a fee.
Wallets may handle the deposit transaction differently - see the wallets page if you have any wallet-specific questions.
All bids are placed through automatic bidding.
When you bid a certain amount, you are in fact instructing Paddle to bid up to that amount on your
behalf.
For the first bid, Paddle will place a bid at the starting price.
As other bids come in, Paddle will place incrementally higher bids for you, up to your bid price.
The winner of an auction will pay what the second-place bidder bids, plus the minimum increment.
This is called a 'second-price sealed-bid auction' and is considered the best auction mechanism for
most cases.
In this type of auction, the best strategy is to honestly bid the maximum amount you would pay for
the item,
since nobody else knows this information, and since you could still end up paying less.
Every time a bid is cast, it must be at least a certain amount higher than the previous bid. This is the "bid increment," and it prevents people from bidding 1 satoshi higher than each other forever.
| Current Price | Bid Increment |
|---|---|
| Up to 9,999 sats | 100 sats |
| 10,000 to 49,999 sats | 1,000 sats |
| 50,000 to 99,999 sats | 2,500 sats |
| 100,000 to 499,999 sats | 5,000 sats |
| 500,000 to 999,999 sats | 10,000 sats |
| 1,000,000 to 4,999,999 sats | 50,000 sats |
| 5,000,000 to 9,999,999 sats | 100,000 sats |
| 10,000,000 to 49,999,999 sats | 250,000 sats |
| 50,000,000 to 99,999,999 sats | 500,000 sats |
| 1BTC and above | 1,000,000 sats |
When somebody wins an auction, the seller is notified of their Twitter account. Contact them via Twitter to arrange payment, and subsequently, shipping.
You are dealing with a stranger, so make sure you collect payment first! The seller is easily held accountable due to their social following, but chances are the buyer is not.
At Trustless Services K.K., we value our namesake of trustlessness. And we have to acknowledge that, while Paddle is non-custodial and trust-minimized, it is not completely trustless. We are also able to (and required to) censor the sale of items such as stolen goods.
Therefore, for those who value trustlessness as much as we do, we plan to provide a self-hosted, trustless implementation of Paddle, suited for use by individual sellers. We strive to make it easier for anyone to deploy and host their own auctions, trustlessly.
Bitcoin is an online currency whose rules are enforced by everyone but is controlled by noone.
The lightning network allows instant transfers of bitcoin at a low cost, and is gradually being adopted as a payment method.
Paddle has no interest in holding our users' money. We won't accept payment on your behalf, or even hold on to bidders' deposits.
We achieve this by using 'hodl invoices', which are transactions that are sent to us but not settled. We settle the transaction if the bidder wins the auction; we cancel the transaction if a new highest bidder appears.
While we don't take custody of funds, please understand that the final transaction takes place directly between the buyer and seller. Unless the seller and buyer agree to use an escrow, the transaction between the two will require trust.