Let's assume Tor is compromised in the future. What platform is better?

If Tor ever has a security issue or a de-anonymizing attack that can successfully identify the IP address of those using it...

If it's a centralized marketplace, like that based on BitWasp: the only people that is arrested are the site administrators. Not the buyers or the dealers. Assuming they always encrypt and have decent OpSec. Dealers and buyers can move onto the next bitwasp marketplace, which hopefully has better administration.

If it's open Bazaar and all of the sellers are all running nodes they all get doxed and arrested. Their drugs, money, and shipping addresses are seized. No more drug dealers. No more escrow agents. Most buyers are likely fine since they would log in for short period of times. (same risk as above) and most of their addresses would (hopefully) be deleted by the vendors.

Decentralized marketplaces may be the answer, but the design of Open Bazaar makes it harder for everyone to remain anonymous. The better option is likely BitXBay (Google it) but until that is worked out, I think centralized marketplaces are here to stay, though they'll be using multsig and hopefully the coins won't be seized.


Comments


[2 Points] mad87645:

If it's open Bazaar and all of the sellers are all running nodes they all get doxed and arrested.

If it's a decent sized market (Not even talking Agora, SR2, Evo level big, I'm talking BlackBank, C9, BSM etc level big) you already have thousands of vendors all over the world. While most vendors are small time one man ships, the big fish (XanaxKing, Scurvy Crew, Bungee, PFM/Humboldt Farms, there are probably better examples but I'm just thinking of ones that help to illustrate my point) at their prime are drug dealing powerhouses with plenty of manpower (and probably firepower) on board.

Taking down a small time guy is easy provided you have their address and evidence on them, just get 2 cops when they're not harassing teenage stoners or beating up black people to stop by with a warrant. Dealer is outnumbered 2:1, cops get their arrest, probably find a nice little stash they will remember to nick from the lockup later etc etc. Taking down a team is hard work, you need to scope the place out and find out who you are dealing with. How many guys are there? Do they have connections that may bite the cops in the ass? What does their base of operations look like? What weaponry do they have? Once that is sorted you need to assemble a team that can overwhelm and take them down very quickly which means taking cops off the street for a while. Then you have to try and co-ordinate the thing to work at precisely the same time, because once news of the first busts hit the internet it will explode faster than Jlaws nude leak.

For that scenario to be plausible, we are expecting the same governments that still wholeheartedly swear by the reefer madness crap to show a level of sophistication, intelligence and cunning the likes of which has never been seen before. To me, that is like expecting a shouting homeless man to be able to sing Pavarotti. Simply could not happen. They could catch a few maybe but the ship will sail before they have broken the surface.

Decentralized markets are the future I believe, just like how piracy changed from central services like Napster and Limewire to torrenting and cloud services, you cut off one head and 10 million more smaller heads grow in its place. These markets still have a long time in development, finding a way to offer escrow services and hosting the nodes are still issues to be sorted out, but once the first stable decentralized markets take off, the worlds Drug Agencies can kiss their jobs and credibility's goodbye.


[2 Points] KittenBaconOffspring:

i2p


[1 Points] ghfgmfkkkbbbbkk:

All anon networks will suffer from the same attacks, if you can monitor the endpoints it doesnt matter what happens in between you can deanonymize traffic. NSA has near global awareness due to realtime international sharing of IX traffic data and various taps along the underseas cables. Tor traffic is encrypted end to end with hidden services too but they dont have to see what you are sending to see timing and size signatures that make your stream stand out.

There arent any solutions to this other than creating a high latency network that moves data in a uniform manner, this is the only type of network that will defeat the global adversary, but it does not exist yet though there are some rough attempts at it currently, the question is will anyone use a network that only updates once every hour? How important is it to have for say an order placed or an email received in a minute rather than an hour?

This is the future, i hope it comes along because frankly i think we are all starting to see Tor fall apart.


[1 Points] Homer_Goes_Crazy:

How does escrow/funds transfer work with Open Bazaar or a decentralized market?


[1 Points] Idonu:

There's freenet and i2p. I haven't really looked too much into them though so not sure about their network encryption/how it all works.