A marketplace startup is a tough business, because you not only have attract buyers and sellers, you need to police scammers.
Even Ebay/Amazon doesn't have a handle on this completely and they ARE billion dollar marketplaces.
Even Ebay/Amazon doesn't have a handle on this completely and they ARE billion dollar marketplaces.
I wonder if scamming is actually a symptom of a successful marketplace. Scammers presumably have to think through their opportunity costs and would want to focus on marketplaces with many buyers and sellers and high transaction volume.
For new marketplaces the risk and reward are pretty low. For mature marketplaces the reward is much higher and the risks probably vary based on your home country.
The ideal for a scammer is probably a site with good enough security to remove most scammers but not good enough to remove you.
Think about Uber as a marketplace which heavily curates scammers, success is a matter of many discussions though.
Often this is based on prior history, based on exchanges with admins. It's possible for accounts/users to be rehabilitated. "Vouch" actions or emailing mods can have effects.