Abstract: Electronic commerce is facilitated through adaptive trade specifications and matchmaking optimization. Adaptive trade specifications provide a standard format for traders to specify what they want to obtain and what they are willing to give for it, in both qualitative and quantitative terms, as well as constraints and an objective such as maximum profit or minimum price. The standard format of the adaptive trade specifications allows the matchmaking optimization process to find the optimal match between traders. For example, if a buyer wishes to minimize the price of a desired purchase, subject to certain constraints, the standard format allows location of sellers meeting the constraints and performs one of various types of optimization to match the buyer with one or more sellers. Thus, one or more mutually agreeable transactions can be recommended.