Silk Road forums

Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: silkroadmaster on May 11, 2013, 05:55 am

Title: Future of SilkRoad in 50 to 100 years?
Post by: silkroadmaster on May 11, 2013, 05:55 am
Hi everyone, I am thinking about the future of SilkRoad and how far it into the future it will be viable. I realize that as of now it's almost impossible for the governments to crack down on anyone on SilkRoad right now, unless they do something stupid like that one seller that got caught recently. But I doubt SilkRoad's viability into the coming decades, to a century. Like once computing power is greatly increased would they be able to decrypt SilkRoad's internet traffic. I am thinking way ahead here, but it just seems like every other group selling illegal things have always gotten caught in the past. Not everyone in that group but still. Like one of the major leaders in a big Mexican drug gang recently got caught. I know SilkRoad is doing good now in protecting it's sellers. But the future for me is questionable.

Can anyone here with a real sense of how this technology works reply please?
 
Thanks, peace.
Title: Re: Future of SilkRoad in 50 to 100 years?
Post by: BudMaster on May 11, 2013, 06:23 am
Eventually they are going to shut down the tor network which won't be hard for them to do, then bye bye Silk Road.
I see it lasting 10-15 years max. The USA will be a third world country by then.
Title: Re: Future of SilkRoad in 50 to 100 years?
Post by: silkroadmaster on May 11, 2013, 06:38 am
Really, why would they close down the tor network?
Title: Re: Future of SilkRoad in 50 to 100 years?
Post by: accountoperator on May 11, 2013, 06:41 am
Eventually they are going to shut down the tor network which won't be hard for them to do, then bye bye Silk Road.
I see it lasting 10-15 years max. The USA will be a third world country by then.

The US government funds the tor network. 1.3 mil a year. They need it. We would move to I2P or something if TOR was gone.

Silk Road most likely wont be the head honcho forever. Who still uses AOL? Not many people.
Title: Re: Future of SilkRoad in 50 to 100 years?
Post by: silkroadmaster on May 11, 2013, 06:58 am
We would move to I2P or something if TOR was gone.
That is what I was thinking. BTW I just looked up that I2P thing and it sounds like a pretty good technology perhaps.

Silk Road most likely wont be the head honcho forever. Who still uses AOL? Not many people.
I am not talking about SR specifically, but rather the is technology good enough for keeping the SR type sellers safe, way into the future.
Title: Re: Future of SilkRoad in 50 to 100 years?
Post by: quixotist on May 11, 2013, 07:34 am
I hope we see an end to the sort of centralization that SR represents, a single site dominating this brave new world is not a good idea. In my ideal world we'd have every vendor having their own shop on a decentralized market where communication is routed through trusted friends to reach the destination, sort of how RetroShare does it.

This would be better than SR because there would be a market of index sites, escrow agents and trust networks, it would be far more resilient to attack than one single site that could be closed down for whatever reason. I hope we see something like this within the next 5 years, the technology is available today anyway.

Trying to guess where we'll be in 50 years is impossible though, 50 years ago it was the 70s and technology moves much faster nowadays.
Title: Re: Future of SilkRoad in 50 to 100 years?
Post by: Railgun on May 11, 2013, 07:41 am
Eventually they are going to shut down the tor network which won't be hard for them to do, then bye bye Silk Road.
I see it lasting 10-15 years max. The USA will be a third world country by then.

I am not quite sure how feasible all this is for the following reasons:
--TOR, itself, is legal. 
--Other encryption have been available to users for clandestine purposes for quite sometime (PGP) and used for illegal activies (in fact Heavensgate--the suicide club of the 90s is one of the sites in which PGP instructions on illegal activity are STILL offered on google search nearly 2 decades later). It is not so easy to restrict such on the basis of them being legal. 
--It is decentralized; Napster etc was not, which is why it was shut down so easily

I think places like the road will be here for quite sometime.  However, I do see them scaring the shit out of exit node providers in desperation, something that's already started
Title: Re: Future of SilkRoad in 50 to 100 years?
Post by: mikz0r on May 11, 2013, 09:16 am
Well, 50-100 yrs is pure hope. Will probably last 5-10 years before either economy for coders blow up and site/tor has to close down due to financial problems. OR, some sort of government taking it down.