This project shouldn't be related to SR, but someone really should make a free market system that allows for the decentralized marketing of all goods (think a free market volunteer network of anonymized hidden services working redundantly to mirror the same cryptographically ensured as neutral and 'ignorant' market environment...after all taking out a network of fifty hidden services is going to be a bit harder than taking out one or two servers. Also taking out the admins of fifty hidden services is much harder than pwning the admin of a single site), and includes the ability to communicate via multiple latencies, place orders and product offers, easily create arbitrary network overlays for individual encrypted message distribution (compartmentalization) while allowing for whitelist based mostly open participation communications (some sort of pseudonym based distributed&centralized trust whitelist system for large communication networks / far outreach product advertisement) analyze trust networks, manage bitcoins / mix bitcoins / manage escrows, run auctions, leave reviews and product ratings etc. These things can be done with much higher security and anonymity than we are getting with the currently used tool set, although some components we are currently using should work their way into the new system (Tor for example). The project should aim to avoid all hierarchy in the communications and market components, instead being an 'all channel network' in this aspect (look it up if you care). Users should be the administration and moderation of only their own perception of the market, of course maybe using input from other users to help them make their choices (think distributed whitelists). This is really good for another reason also. Running a site like SR is illegal. Hosting a server for a network like I describe isn't anywhere near as inherently illegal. There is no law against hosting sophisticated security technology. For the same reason it isn't illegal to run a Freenet server but it is illegal to host CP on a Tor hidden service, even though essentially all Freenet nodes host CP. No Freenet content is associated with any specific Freenet storage node, with Tor there is a direct relation between the site that you host and the server it is hosted on. This isn't to say that Freenet is better than Tor, SR should stay on Tor for now. It should also come with a preconfigured operating environment. One that has been hardened to the maximum possible degree. It should support multiple 'modes of deployment' ranging from having applications pre-isolated with paravirtualization / mandatory access control systems to being easily usable with physical isolation solutions where components are run on individual machines that are physically networked together. It should include an installation script that puts it deniably encrypted on a thumb drive if you go with the paravirtualization based isolation route instead of physical layer isolation. And to the user it should be point and click simple, easier than using E-bay itself with a really nice shiny intelligently designed for end user simplicity GUI. It should allow users to set their own level of security to an extent, for trade offs between security and ease of use. A prime example of this is multi-latency mixing, where users set their own latency and anonymity requirements. Most of all it needs to hide the technical details from users who could care less, while making them very highly available to and audited by people who care at all. If it is a Silk Road project it will not get a large user base though, it really needs to be fully independent of illegal activity. And it probably needs to be done in a few individual projects that are then combined together, instead of one big project. One tool that looks like it will fit in very nicely is Open Transactions.