9 ms·

Inside the ‘DarkMarket’ prototype, a Silk Road the FBI can't seize

139 points by yiransheng 12y ago

jacques_chester 12y ago
I see that the basics of marketing have not been swept away by bitcoin.
- etherael 12y ago
  What do you mean?
  - jacques_chester 12y ago
    I mean that making categorical statements is marketing 101. Tell people what they want to hear. People want to hear that they can trade illegally with zero risk of being caught: so tell them that. No need to sully people's minds with tedious details like the risk of design flaws, the risk of implementation flaws, dealers giving you up in a plea deal, undercover agents ... etc etc etc. The most important lesson of security is that it is about probabilities, not certainties. You can only ever secure yourself against attackers with a given level of motivation and resources. When you brag about your security, you create a more motivated attacker. And the FBI is pretty well-resourced, as attackers go.
    - etherael 12y ago
      I see, actually there's a popular thread in the bitcoin subreddit petitioning to change the name to "FreeMarket" to escape the negative connotations of "DarkMarket", so it seems a lot of people see it as a marketing failure rather than success. I partially agree with you even though I want to see the state destroyed. Goading them to attack will likely result in consequences for some of the people using the tool, but it's also a way to put active hostile pressure on the attack surfaces as well to quickly show any security flaws.
dang 12y ago
The original url [1] was blogspam—that is, it was a knock-off of some other, more original source. In such cases HN prefers the original source. Submitters: please double-check the article you post for links to an original source. If there is one, please post it instead. http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/silk-road-successor-darkmarket-untouchable-by-feds-claim-creators-1446241 http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/silk-road-successor-darkmarket-unto...
- phreeza 12y ago
  Off topic: I like these transparent mod comments you have been doing! Do you set a flag to keep them at the bottom or do they get so few upvotes?
  - dang 12y ago
    Glad to hear it! That's exactly right. There's a flag for off-topic subthreads that I put on most of these, so they don't interfere with the real discussion.
    - stcredzero 12y ago
      Is there a flag for disabling edits of certain comments?
      - phreeza 12y ago
        Editing is disabled a certain time after the comment is posted, perhaps that is what you have observed?
        stcredzero 12y ago
        It was well under 2 minutes.
      - dang 12y ago
        There was a bug I fixed the other day that was shortening the edit window on comments. That fix was temporarily lost when the server restarted, so my guess is that you were affected by the rejuvenated bug—in which case, sorry. The fix won't be permanent until I find a few hours to get back to the damn code. But at least it's live at the moment.
ixmatus 12y ago
Never seize but that's not the true problem, is it? Anonymity is the actual problem. Why aren't there any of these guys trying to build this sort of thing on-top of https://gnunet.org/ https://gnunet.org/ ?
- jamesroseman 12y ago
  That's a really good point. In my university Networks & Protocols course we made an anonymous messaging fabric where all the nodes could talk to one another but none knew who anyone else was, and every node could connect into the network by just knowing one node's address. Could you make a market like this anonymous in the same fashion? Even if the Feds seized one node they'd have only seized one node?
  - ixmatus 12y ago
    I think you could, check out GNUnet, seriously. Those guys have been laboring away for a long time to produce a platform for anonymous and encrypted communication. GNUnet can be used to build a darknet of any sort: P2P chat, a social networking application, email, you name it. Brilliant people are plugging away at it to build a platform for people with less knowledge of cryptography (like me) to build this sort of stuff on top of.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- dylandrop 12y ago
  Anonymity is definitely a big problem, but there's something to be said for a network that doesn't have a central authority. I don't think the problem with Silk Road was the anonymity, it was more the fact that it was a central authority - once that was taken down, the whole system stopped. As the article says, it's very difficult for the feds to take down a network like this if there's a ton of people using it.
  - ixmatus 12y ago
    Right, but distributed systems are solved problem at this point, anonymity is much harder, and GNUnet's primary model is distributed / mesh darknets as a foundation for some of their anonymity features.
alttab 12y ago
The arbiter system is broken. The bitcoin are effective timely controlled by who controls the arbiter.
pmorici 12y ago
What an unfortunate name. Not only does it share a name with a cyber crime forum taken down a few years back but it invokes the thought of trade in illicit goods. There was a thread on reddit a few days back talking about how they should have called it "FreeMarket" because it would be harder for politicians and media pundits to dismiss out of hand since it would sound like they were against one of the tenants of capitalism ie: the free market.
- itistoday2 12y ago
  Let's not hide behind euphemisms. [EDIT2: OK, I agree that calling it the "FreeMarket" may be a wise move, it nevertheless reminded me a bit of the same game that the politicians play by using words like "criminal", "illicit", etc. in reference to the War on Drugs: manipulation via the negative connotation of words. If on the other hand, like Riseed pointed out in a reply below, what you're saying is that it's simply more accurate to call it a free market, then I agree, that's a strong stance to take.] We need to turn the tables on these politicians. The truth is that they are the inhumane ones. They are responsible for millions of deaths and atrocities thanks to their support of the War on Drugs. [EDIT3: for citations see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7656095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7656095 ] "Illicit goods"? How about illicit politicians? War criminals whose face is framed in your neighborhood government office? Call a spade a spade. The War on Drugs is a War on Humanity. It is literally responsible for more collective human suffering than the Holocaust. EDIT: Unfortunate to see fellow HN'ers downvoting me on this issue. Don't want to here it from me? Maybe you'll find Richard Branson and H.L. Mencken more appealing: http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/06/opinion/branson-end-war-on-drugs/ http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/06/opinion/branson-end-war-on-dru...
  - tokenadult 12y ago
    Politicians just by supporting current drug regulations are responsible for "millions of deaths"? Do you have evidence to back up that extraordinary claim? AFTER EDIT: I note a downvote for disagreement. So I will ask the obvious follow-up question. With what part of the two questions I originally posted do you disagree, and what facts and reasoning should I consider to change my opinion?
frozenport 12y ago
Questions: 1. How is this distributed? For example, torrents require a tracker. What does 'zeromq' do that enables them to not have any centralized server at all. Where is the client list? 2. Does every user need to download the whole marketplace, including all resources like images? Downloading a bitcoin wallet takes forever, wouldn't this be much worse? Similar to keeping the whole internet in a single file?
- icebraining 12y ago
  torrents require a tracker Not if you use the DHT.
- TehCorwiz 12y ago
  Each ZeroMQ daemon can be a provider or a consumer of data. Therefor given a list of upstream providers it can request data and given a list of downstream consumers it can register as a provider. http://zeromq.org/ http://zeromq.org/ No, It's HTTP like the web, except when you ask for DarkVendor555's info it loads it over this distributed network instead of from a central server.
  - frozenport 12y ago
    Ah I see, but I wonder how this scales, if you need to download a client list everytime you connect. I guess downloading a client list is easier compared to downloading all the resources. Maybe download a small fraction of the list?
    - TehCorwiz 12y ago
      Well, both BitTorrent and Tor implement distributed client lists in a performant way. I wouldn't imagine this is much different or worse.
api 12y ago
Tor needs a mechanism for P2P, like ephemeral .onion addresses. Then it could just run over Tor which is already a proven anonymity technology.
tokenadult 12y ago
Never say never. The one thing the history of online networks teaches all of us is that some attack surfaces are very hard to imagine--until someone imagines the attack surface and uses it to interfere with the network. There is plenty of interest on the part of law enforcement authorities in figuring out ways of enforcing the law on networks like the proposed (not yet implemented) network described in the article kindly submitted here. The article begins by saying, "The Silk Road . . . still offered its enemies a single point of failure," referring to Silk Road being hosted on a single server. Well, that is the KNOWN point of failure for keeping Silk Road impervious to law enforcement, but there may have been other points of failure in Silk Road's design. About the proposed DarkMarket, the article writes, "DarkMarket, Taaki and its other developers admit, is still just an experimental demonstration. They have yet to integrate anonymity protections like Tor into the software; currently every user’s IP address is listed for every other user to see." The proposal needs a lot more work to become a practical proposal for attempting to evade law enforcement scrutiny. Whether or not DarkMarket is ever implemented, and whether or not it will work as expected if it is implemented, are still open questions. The biggest open question is whether or not there will be ways for law enforcement efforts to reach into the DarkMarket even if it works in practice as the proposals suggests it is meant to work.
- andrewljohnson 12y ago
  To summarize your comment: * attacks are hard to predict * law enforcement is interested in attacking * being hosted on a single server is just one way to make something attackable * the proposal needs more work * whether this actually works is an open question * the real question is whether law enforcement will be able to attack In a nutshell, this is circular logic that ends where it begins, and makes no journeys elsewhere. It makes no technical criticism of DarkMarket, references no historical or similar examples, and offers no extra information from other sources (such as the source code). So, I down-voted, and wonder why all the up-votes.
  - michaelt 12y ago
    I think the summary is: It's premature to call this 'a Silk Road the FBI Can Never Seize' until it has withstood a few years of determined attacks. If you look at a lot of the best practices documentation for Tor it makes everything sound like a huge hassle [1] so I can believe making a system secure against the concerted efforts of law enforcement is complicated. [1] http://lifehacker.com/how-can-i-stay-anonymous-with-tor-1498876762 http://lifehacker.com/how-can-i-stay-anonymous-with-tor-1498...
analogj 12y ago
The distributed search would be the most complex part. it could probably work if each user worked as part of a sharded database, being just one part of the index. that would only work if the node was connected all the time tho. its definitely going to be one of the more interesting problems though.
Tenoke 12y ago
I like decentralized services as much as the next guy, but here are some problems off the top of my head: 1. Running a node could easily be made illegal in most jurisdictions (abiding criminals), which is problematic for multiple reasons (there is distinction between helping the market operate and merely browsing it). 2. A big enough bug is enough to get everyone involved in trouble, and even if it is easy to fix the flaw everyone's identity up until that moment would be compromised (bitcoin for example has had many problems, which were later fixed, except that the stakes weren't as high) 3. During disputes, the arbiter can side with whoever offers them the biggest fee.
- walden42 12y ago
  > 3. During disputes, the arbiter can side with whoever offers them the biggest fee. Then he would be left a negative review. Arbiters will be chosen based on fairness.
  - Tenoke 12y ago
    Sure, but making new identities is cheap in such an environment. Not that I am saying there are no fairly easy solutions, that could be implemented to prevent this, or that this is a big issue.
    - stcredzero 12y ago
      Sure, but making new identities is cheap in such an environment. Yes, but the real question is how easily can trust be manufactured?
    - nilved 12y ago
      No, it definitely isn't. It's not enough to have zero negative reviews, you also need to cultivate hundreds of positive reviews.
      - Natsu 12y ago
        How do legitimate people get their first positive review?
azinman2 12y ago
I'm surprised no one has commented on what I thought was the most interesting aspect: using the block chain and digital signatures to create and verify identities. They're using it for a reputation system, and given the distributed nature of their marketplace that's a pretty smart way to do it. By putting it on the block chain you have this externally verifiable (at this point) directory. One of the more creative uses of bitcoin I've seen yet. It's unfortunate that they see this as a "next generation black market;" why couldn't something like this also disrupt eBay or Craigslist? Or something more important in places that have less free markets? The basic tenants should also work for good, not just drugs/guns/etc.
- wyager 12y ago
  Namecoin performs the same task, but has built in key/value storage support.
- mikegioia 12y ago
  why couldn't something like this also disrupt eBay or Craigslist? I thought the same thing. This should be started as a general marketplace for anyone to buy/sell anonymously; it shouldn't come out of the gate as a drug store. I would love to use an anonymous ebay and there are plenty of normal things I would like to buy without it being tied back to my real world name.
- jessaustin 12y ago
  ...why couldn't something like this also disrupt eBay or Craigslist? I don't use eBay much, but is Craigslist really something that invites disruption? It's dependable, there are no arbitrary stupid limitations, everyone uses it, and it's free. The only tactic that could beat that combination would be an overwhelming onslaught of marketing.
  - stcredzero 12y ago
    Craigslist personals seems practically dead.
jackgavigan 12y ago
This is very similar to an idea I came up with in 2006, for decentralised financial trading, with counterparties trading directly with one another and trust provided by central counterparties who would novate the trade. Details here: http://jackgavigan.com/?attachment_id=796 http://jackgavigan.com/?attachment_id=796
- Lost_BiomedE 12y ago
  Curious, how is this different than trading Forex with a non-dealing desk broker? Or something like Nadex, where you trade directly on the exchange and each trade between you and a market maker is essentially in escrow until the outcome is realized?
  - jackgavigan 12y ago
    > Curious, how is this different than trading Forex with a non-dealing desk broker? Well, the broker's a middleman. He's going to add some commission to the price. A decentralised system allows you the option of trading directly with the other end of the deal and bypassing the middlemen that normally make money by connecting the two endpoint counterparties of a trade. > Or something like Nadex, where you trade directly on the exchange and each trade between you and a market maker is essentially in escrow until the outcome is realized? What if you don't want to use Nadex? What if you could get a better price trading directly with someone else instead? What if you want to trade something that Nadex doesn't support?
    - Lost_BiomedE 12y ago
      Ah. I was thinking mostly of counter-party risks. Yeah, if you could get the liquidity, the spreads available may be real nice. I think the way trading has been trending technologically, we will get there eventually. Thanks
primitivesuave 12y ago
Surely we're at that phase in technological development where Murphy's law no longer applies. I mean, we have build systems and unit tests now!
coldcode 12y ago
As long as there are people involved in this somewhere it can never be out of the reach of the law. Al Capone thought he had it all figured out and they got him on income tax evasion. If you build a system that is based on illegal activities instead of legal, all you do is make yourself a fat target and all the rest of us will suffer even if we don't care for the illegal products.
- josu 12y ago
  And that's a risk some people are willing to take. What's revolutionary about this is that there is no way to take down the whole network as they did with Silkroad. Of course some people are going to go down, but that won't affect the integrity of the network.
niix 12y ago
Hey it's using Twitter Bootstrap.
- icpmacdo 12y ago
  Duh it was built at a hackathon!
wfn 12y ago
Hmhm. Why do they use their own (by which i mean, 'custom') elliptic curve implementation (in pure python - what about timing / side channel attacks?) https://github.com/darkwallet/darkmarket/blob/master/ecdsa/ellipticcurve.py https://github.com/darkwallet/darkmarket/blob/master/ecdsa/e... https://github.com/darkwallet/darkmarket/blob/master/ecdsa/numbertheory.py https://github.com/darkwallet/darkmarket/blob/master/ecdsa/n... Would be nice to see some kind of design paper, threat model, etc. Of course a PoC is supposed to be a PoC - good for them, for releasing code that works :) but, people might end up using it and trusting it. So gotta ask those questions.

139 points by yiransheng 12y ago

jacques_chester 12y ago

I see that the basics of marketing have not been swept away by bitcoin.

etherael 12y ago
What do you mean?
- jacques_chester 12y ago
  I mean that making categorical statements is marketing 101. Tell people what they want to hear. People want to hear that they can trade illegally with zero risk of being caught: so tell them that. No need to sully people's minds with tedious details like the risk of design flaws, the risk of implementation flaws, dealers giving you up in a plea deal, undercover agents ... etc etc etc. The most important lesson of security is that it is about probabilities, not certainties. You can only ever secure yourself against attackers with a given level of motivation and resources. When you brag about your security, you create a more motivated attacker. And the FBI is pretty well-resourced, as attackers go.
  - etherael 12y ago
    I see, actually there's a popular thread in the bitcoin subreddit petitioning to change the name to "FreeMarket" to escape the negative connotations of "DarkMarket", so it seems a lot of people see it as a marketing failure rather than success. I partially agree with you even though I want to see the state destroyed. Goading them to attack will likely result in consequences for some of the people using the tool, but it's also a way to put active hostile pressure on the attack surfaces as well to quickly show any security flaws.

dang 12y ago

The original url [1] was blogspam—that is, it was a knock-off of some other, more original source. In such cases HN prefers the original source. Submitters: please double-check the article you post for links to an original source. If there is one, please post it instead. http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/silk-road-successor-darkmarket-untouchable-by-feds-claim-creators-1446241 http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/silk-road-successor-darkmarket-unto...

phreeza 12y ago
Off topic: I like these transparent mod comments you have been doing! Do you set a flag to keep them at the bottom or do they get so few upvotes?
- dang 12y ago
  Glad to hear it! That's exactly right. There's a flag for off-topic subthreads that I put on most of these, so they don't interfere with the real discussion.
  - stcredzero 12y ago
    Is there a flag for disabling edits of certain comments?
    - phreeza 12y ago
      Editing is disabled a certain time after the comment is posted, perhaps that is what you have observed?
      - stcredzero 12y ago
        It was well under 2 minutes.
    - dang 12y ago
      There was a bug I fixed the other day that was shortening the edit window on comments. That fix was temporarily lost when the server restarted, so my guess is that you were affected by the rejuvenated bug—in which case, sorry. The fix won't be permanent until I find a few hours to get back to the damn code. But at least it's live at the moment.

ixmatus 12y ago

Never seize but that's not the true problem, is it? Anonymity is the actual problem. Why aren't there any of these guys trying to build this sort of thing on-top of https://gnunet.org/ https://gnunet.org/ ?

jamesroseman 12y ago
That's a really good point. In my university Networks & Protocols course we made an anonymous messaging fabric where all the nodes could talk to one another but none knew who anyone else was, and every node could connect into the network by just knowing one node's address. Could you make a market like this anonymous in the same fashion? Even if the Feds seized one node they'd have only seized one node?
- ixmatus 12y ago
  I think you could, check out GNUnet, seriously. Those guys have been laboring away for a long time to produce a platform for anonymous and encrypted communication. GNUnet can be used to build a darknet of any sort: P2P chat, a social networking application, email, you name it. Brilliant people are plugging away at it to build a platform for people with less knowledge of cryptography (like me) to build this sort of stuff on top of.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
dylandrop 12y ago
Anonymity is definitely a big problem, but there's something to be said for a network that doesn't have a central authority. I don't think the problem with Silk Road was the anonymity, it was more the fact that it was a central authority - once that was taken down, the whole system stopped. As the article says, it's very difficult for the feds to take down a network like this if there's a ton of people using it.
- ixmatus 12y ago
  Right, but distributed systems are solved problem at this point, anonymity is much harder, and GNUnet's primary model is distributed / mesh darknets as a foundation for some of their anonymity features.

alttab 12y ago

The arbiter system is broken. The bitcoin are effective timely controlled by who controls the arbiter.

pmorici 12y ago

What an unfortunate name. Not only does it share a name with a cyber crime forum taken down a few years back but it invokes the thought of trade in illicit goods. There was a thread on reddit a few days back talking about how they should have called it "FreeMarket" because it would be harder for politicians and media pundits to dismiss out of hand since it would sound like they were against one of the tenants of capitalism ie: the free market.

itistoday2 12y ago
Let's not hide behind euphemisms. [EDIT2: OK, I agree that calling it the "FreeMarket" may be a wise move, it nevertheless reminded me a bit of the same game that the politicians play by using words like "criminal", "illicit", etc. in reference to the War on Drugs: manipulation via the negative connotation of words. If on the other hand, like Riseed pointed out in a reply below, what you're saying is that it's simply more accurate to call it a free market, then I agree, that's a strong stance to take.] We need to turn the tables on these politicians. The truth is that they are the inhumane ones. They are responsible for millions of deaths and atrocities thanks to their support of the War on Drugs. [EDIT3: for citations see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7656095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7656095 ] "Illicit goods"? How about illicit politicians? War criminals whose face is framed in your neighborhood government office? Call a spade a spade. The War on Drugs is a War on Humanity. It is literally responsible for more collective human suffering than the Holocaust. EDIT: Unfortunate to see fellow HN'ers downvoting me on this issue. Don't want to here it from me? Maybe you'll find Richard Branson and H.L. Mencken more appealing: http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/06/opinion/branson-end-war-on-drugs/ http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/06/opinion/branson-end-war-on-dru...
- tokenadult 12y ago
  Politicians just by supporting current drug regulations are responsible for "millions of deaths"? Do you have evidence to back up that extraordinary claim? AFTER EDIT: I note a downvote for disagreement. So I will ask the obvious follow-up question. With what part of the two questions I originally posted do you disagree, and what facts and reasoning should I consider to change my opinion?

frozenport 12y ago

Questions: 1. How is this distributed? For example, torrents require a tracker. What does 'zeromq' do that enables them to not have any centralized server at all. Where is the client list? 2. Does every user need to download the whole marketplace, including all resources like images? Downloading a bitcoin wallet takes forever, wouldn't this be much worse? Similar to keeping the whole internet in a single file?

icebraining 12y ago
torrents require a tracker Not if you use the DHT.
TehCorwiz 12y ago
Each ZeroMQ daemon can be a provider or a consumer of data. Therefor given a list of upstream providers it can request data and given a list of downstream consumers it can register as a provider. http://zeromq.org/ http://zeromq.org/ No, It's HTTP like the web, except when you ask for DarkVendor555's info it loads it over this distributed network instead of from a central server.
- frozenport 12y ago
  Ah I see, but I wonder how this scales, if you need to download a client list everytime you connect. I guess downloading a client list is easier compared to downloading all the resources. Maybe download a small fraction of the list?
  - TehCorwiz 12y ago
    Well, both BitTorrent and Tor implement distributed client lists in a performant way. I wouldn't imagine this is much different or worse.

api 12y ago

Tor needs a mechanism for P2P, like ephemeral .onion addresses. Then it could just run over Tor which is already a proven anonymity technology.

tokenadult 12y ago

Never say never. The one thing the history of online networks teaches all of us is that some attack surfaces are very hard to imagine--until someone imagines the attack surface and uses it to interfere with the network. There is plenty of interest on the part of law enforcement authorities in figuring out ways of enforcing the law on networks like the proposed (not yet implemented) network described in the article kindly submitted here. The article begins by saying, "The Silk Road . . . still offered its enemies a single point of failure," referring to Silk Road being hosted on a single server. Well, that is the KNOWN point of failure for keeping Silk Road impervious to law enforcement, but there may have been other points of failure in Silk Road's design. About the proposed DarkMarket, the article writes, "DarkMarket, Taaki and its other developers admit, is still just an experimental demonstration. They have yet to integrate anonymity protections like Tor into the software; currently every user’s IP address is listed for every other user to see." The proposal needs a lot more work to become a practical proposal for attempting to evade law enforcement scrutiny. Whether or not DarkMarket is ever implemented, and whether or not it will work as expected if it is implemented, are still open questions. The biggest open question is whether or not there will be ways for law enforcement efforts to reach into the DarkMarket even if it works in practice as the proposals suggests it is meant to work.

andrewljohnson 12y ago
To summarize your comment: * attacks are hard to predict * law enforcement is interested in attacking * being hosted on a single server is just one way to make something attackable * the proposal needs more work * whether this actually works is an open question * the real question is whether law enforcement will be able to attack In a nutshell, this is circular logic that ends where it begins, and makes no journeys elsewhere. It makes no technical criticism of DarkMarket, references no historical or similar examples, and offers no extra information from other sources (such as the source code). So, I down-voted, and wonder why all the up-votes.
- michaelt 12y ago
  I think the summary is: It's premature to call this 'a Silk Road the FBI Can Never Seize' until it has withstood a few years of determined attacks. If you look at a lot of the best practices documentation for Tor it makes everything sound like a huge hassle [1] so I can believe making a system secure against the concerted efforts of law enforcement is complicated. [1] http://lifehacker.com/how-can-i-stay-anonymous-with-tor-1498876762 http://lifehacker.com/how-can-i-stay-anonymous-with-tor-1498...

analogj 12y ago

The distributed search would be the most complex part. it could probably work if each user worked as part of a sharded database, being just one part of the index. that would only work if the node was connected all the time tho. its definitely going to be one of the more interesting problems though.

Tenoke 12y ago

I like decentralized services as much as the next guy, but here are some problems off the top of my head: 1. Running a node could easily be made illegal in most jurisdictions (abiding criminals), which is problematic for multiple reasons (there is distinction between helping the market operate and merely browsing it). 2. A big enough bug is enough to get everyone involved in trouble, and even if it is easy to fix the flaw everyone's identity up until that moment would be compromised (bitcoin for example has had many problems, which were later fixed, except that the stakes weren't as high) 3. During disputes, the arbiter can side with whoever offers them the biggest fee.

walden42 12y ago
> 3. During disputes, the arbiter can side with whoever offers them the biggest fee. Then he would be left a negative review. Arbiters will be chosen based on fairness.
- Tenoke 12y ago
  Sure, but making new identities is cheap in such an environment. Not that I am saying there are no fairly easy solutions, that could be implemented to prevent this, or that this is a big issue.
  - stcredzero 12y ago
    Sure, but making new identities is cheap in such an environment. Yes, but the real question is how easily can trust be manufactured?
  - nilved 12y ago
    No, it definitely isn't. It's not enough to have zero negative reviews, you also need to cultivate hundreds of positive reviews.
    - Natsu 12y ago
      How do legitimate people get their first positive review?

azinman2 12y ago

I'm surprised no one has commented on what I thought was the most interesting aspect: using the block chain and digital signatures to create and verify identities. They're using it for a reputation system, and given the distributed nature of their marketplace that's a pretty smart way to do it. By putting it on the block chain you have this externally verifiable (at this point) directory. One of the more creative uses of bitcoin I've seen yet. It's unfortunate that they see this as a "next generation black market;" why couldn't something like this also disrupt eBay or Craigslist? Or something more important in places that have less free markets? The basic tenants should also work for good, not just drugs/guns/etc.

wyager 12y ago
Namecoin performs the same task, but has built in key/value storage support.
mikegioia 12y ago
why couldn't something like this also disrupt eBay or Craigslist? I thought the same thing. This should be started as a general marketplace for anyone to buy/sell anonymously; it shouldn't come out of the gate as a drug store. I would love to use an anonymous ebay and there are plenty of normal things I would like to buy without it being tied back to my real world name.
jessaustin 12y ago
...why couldn't something like this also disrupt eBay or Craigslist? I don't use eBay much, but is Craigslist really something that invites disruption? It's dependable, there are no arbitrary stupid limitations, everyone uses it, and it's free. The only tactic that could beat that combination would be an overwhelming onslaught of marketing.
- stcredzero 12y ago
  Craigslist personals seems practically dead.

jackgavigan 12y ago

This is very similar to an idea I came up with in 2006, for decentralised financial trading, with counterparties trading directly with one another and trust provided by central counterparties who would novate the trade. Details here: http://jackgavigan.com/?attachment_id=796 http://jackgavigan.com/?attachment_id=796

Lost_BiomedE 12y ago
Curious, how is this different than trading Forex with a non-dealing desk broker? Or something like Nadex, where you trade directly on the exchange and each trade between you and a market maker is essentially in escrow until the outcome is realized?
- jackgavigan 12y ago
  > Curious, how is this different than trading Forex with a non-dealing desk broker? Well, the broker's a middleman. He's going to add some commission to the price. A decentralised system allows you the option of trading directly with the other end of the deal and bypassing the middlemen that normally make money by connecting the two endpoint counterparties of a trade. > Or something like Nadex, where you trade directly on the exchange and each trade between you and a market maker is essentially in escrow until the outcome is realized? What if you don't want to use Nadex? What if you could get a better price trading directly with someone else instead? What if you want to trade something that Nadex doesn't support?
  - Lost_BiomedE 12y ago
    Ah. I was thinking mostly of counter-party risks. Yeah, if you could get the liquidity, the spreads available may be real nice. I think the way trading has been trending technologically, we will get there eventually. Thanks

primitivesuave 12y ago

Surely we're at that phase in technological development where Murphy's law no longer applies. I mean, we have build systems and unit tests now!

coldcode 12y ago

As long as there are people involved in this somewhere it can never be out of the reach of the law. Al Capone thought he had it all figured out and they got him on income tax evasion. If you build a system that is based on illegal activities instead of legal, all you do is make yourself a fat target and all the rest of us will suffer even if we don't care for the illegal products.

josu 12y ago
And that's a risk some people are willing to take. What's revolutionary about this is that there is no way to take down the whole network as they did with Silkroad. Of course some people are going to go down, but that won't affect the integrity of the network.

niix 12y ago

Hey it's using Twitter Bootstrap.

icpmacdo 12y ago
Duh it was built at a hackathon!

wfn 12y ago

Hmhm. Why do they use their own (by which i mean, 'custom') elliptic curve implementation (in pure python - what about timing / side channel attacks?) https://github.com/darkwallet/darkmarket/blob/master/ecdsa/ellipticcurve.py https://github.com/darkwallet/darkmarket/blob/master/ecdsa/e... https://github.com/darkwallet/darkmarket/blob/master/ecdsa/numbertheory.py https://github.com/darkwallet/darkmarket/blob/master/ecdsa/n... Would be nice to see some kind of design paper, threat model, etc. Of course a PoC is supposed to be a PoC - good for them, for releasing code that works :) but, people might end up using it and trusting it. So gotta ask those questions.