Hi. I hope my comment didn't sound too much like an attack, thought I admit I could have worded it less bluntly. But with that said, I stand behind my (attempt at constructive) criticisms.

This has been working months and months ago, and is relatively trivial to code. This is not the cause of delays.

Not to the "simple" standard that I tried to make the backbone of my post. I may not have made that clear enough.

Last time I tried to go though the process of listing a product, there were many oddities in the process (going from memory, here). Things that just kinda didn't make sense or were left unexplained. This includes things conspicuously missing from the process as well, such as any contact info for me whatsoever. Or even the requirement of having to fill in a shop name or shop configuration details. Which, themselves, are also confusing and lacked sufficient explanation. Even the the button for adding a product was labeled something like "contracts" which doesn't make any sense to most people. I believe what stopped me dead in my tracks was was the panel where i needed to choose an arbitrator. I had no idea where to find one or how I could even trust the person if I did find one.

You say it was working months ago, but like I said, perhaps it as, but your standard of "working" is far less than mine. Mine includes a general sense of intuitiveness in the process.

All of your suggestions assume a robust p2p network where nodes, even behind NATs, are able to communicate with each robustly.

Yes, they do assume that. I didn't mean to imply the underlying communication protocol wasn't an important component of getting these three basic functions working.

So while it seems we're caught up in esoteric tinkering with features (which don't take long to code), the reality is that the networking code (in all its unsexyness) needs to work first.

All the time spent on unnecessary features should have been spent improving the underlying communication protocol. Hence my criticism. I also don't believe that things like supporting arbitrators, product images, and other unnecessary features don't add complexity to this issue and bloat the codebase, making it more difficult to improve and extend the underlying communication protocol. Hence, my criticism.