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After Silk Road 2.0 Bust, Eyes Turn To 'Untouchable' Decentralized Market
apexcp sends this article from The Daily Dot:
Following a wave of Dark Net arrests that brought down the famous anonymous drug market Silk Road 2.0, all eyes have turned to a marketplace called OpenBazaar that is designed to be impossible to shut down. Described as the "next generation of uncensored trade" and a "safe untouchable marketplace," OpenBazaar is fundamentally different from all the online black markets that have come before it, because it is completely decentralized. If authorities acted against OpenBazaar users, they could arrest individuals, but the network would survive. "If you're thinking about OpenBazaar as Silk Road 3.0, you're thinking about it much too narrowly," said OpenBazaar operations lead Sam Patterson in an interview last night. "I actually think it's much more powerful as eCommerce 2.0."
Since it's decentralized, they'll have to go after the actual users. Maybe throw some of them in jail. And since the network will survive, they can generate a steady stream of arrests, rather than shutting down the network and having to find out where all the users have buggered off to.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
you haven't read anything about it have you? it'll have the option of running over TOR, plus most of the items sold will be legal items, nothing illegal about selling something to someone, it's just Ebay without the company charging you fees
This is missing one of Silk Road's major features of "washing" your BitCoins through a central pool. Without the laundering facilities available, it becomes a lot easier to track sellers down.
I suppose a decentralized eBay-ish thing could be handy, but without the money laundering, it's a lot less useful.
This looks great in concept but, having everyone run it on their own machines and host their own store means encouraging lots of people to be vulnerable to every security issue that comes along. Oops one remote exploit and anyone's anonymity can be compromised.
Now, I am not fool, I realize that many of the bigger players will take more steps will protect themselves with dedicated servers rented under false identities etc....but the vast majority are being encouraged to leave themselves exposed to every vulnerablity that comes along because they don't have the sophistication to play the game that they are being encouraged to play.
This is one of the reasons I really liked the concept of freenet....sure everyone is hosting but, there is author anonimty beyond simply "you can't find my IP", there is actual separation between hosted data and how it is published.
Of course, I haven't tried it in years but, the problem always more seemed to be speed than anything since it is funadamentally a storage and retrieval mechanism and not a transport layer.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
After watching the video with the guy from OpenBazaar, and from things I've read lately about where capitalism is going, I have to wonder, where is the end game in all this?
AirBnB threatens the hotel/motel paradigm, Lift and Uber threaten taxis, now OpenBazaar threatens online commerce, bitcoin, etc;
These new services appear to be starting a crack, albeit a small one, in the current model of how money is made and by who.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
No no no, don't you see? This is entirely unlike Craig's List! For one thing, it doesn't have Craig. For another... um, ... LOOK BEHIND YOU, A THREE HEADED MONKEY!
People give up their liberties when government cries "ILLEGAL". The problem is, there is no crime between two willing people.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
This is why the Gentle User cannot have nice things.
Tor must be implemented with precision. The steps are involved because the theory is involved. Some of the better, well-informed and technically savvy users have been busted.
I am an IT professional and I am not at all comfortable that I could use Tor and guarantee my own anonymity.
I advise people against using Tor in hopes that they will be able to surf without discovery because it can give a false sense of freedom to do as one wishes.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.