[OPSEC/Computer] Could encryption make it legal to run a dark net market in the future?

You know how mega uses encryption. Do you think encryption can ever be used in a similar way to mega but for dark net markets? Sounds quite silly but do you think it might ever be a possibility? So the people who run the market won't get in any trouble.


Comments


[8 Points] CocaineNose:

No it will never be legal. The DNM and admin are treated like organized crime. That's why DPR is being charged with selling drugs, fake ids, credit cards etc. Even though he didn't personally sell anything.


[4 Points] gwern:

Mega succeeds (for now) with that strategy because all they are required to do is provide a binary blob for download. That's what they are, a download service. They don't need to know anything whatsoever about the contents. Someone uploads file X, someone downloads file X.

In contrast, think about the bundle of services a market provides. You do more with a market than just download webpages, right? Someone updates the reputation and feedback on all the vendors, someone does dispute resolution, someone holds and releases bitcoins. The most obvious way to handle all these requirements is not just knowing what the webpages are about, but knowing about everything going on in the market so you can carry out appropriate actions.

This is the challenge of creating distributed markets: how do you either remove the need for any of that or at least split apart all these functions over a large network of unknown and untrustworthy participants? And the mechanisms proposed can be understood as attacking pieces of the puzzle: signed listings allow trustworthy distribution of price/offering data (if a peer tampers with a listing to claim Bungee's MDMA costs 10x, the signature will fail to verify as Bungee's and the wrong version will be ignored), public-key crypto lets vendors and buyers communicate securely (no one can penetrate a PGP message), proof-of-burn stops sockpuppets the same way markets stop sock puppets (too expensive to fake a lot of successful transactions), multisig lets anyone be the arbitrator (and if anyone could be the arbitrator, how do you attack them?) or possibly 2-of-2 Nash equilibrium transactions remove the need for any arbitrator at all, and so on.


[4 Points] throwahooawayyfoe:

Could encryption make it legal to run a dark net market in the future?

if it were legal, it wouldn't need to be on the darknet.


[1 Points] impost_r:

If in some cases cloud storage providers get held liable for user uploaded content you can be damn sure darknet admins will definitely get fucked if their defense is "user generated content"