Well, I'm glad most people have everything cleared up and their questions answered. And as I said in the past, theres a lot of shit I can't get into and explain because it would seriously piss off the powers that be everyone has worked so hard first in October gettings things running again, and now regrouping and doing damage assesment after the new wave of arrests. Let me address a couple things - everyone is human, right? Even people with the strongest sense of OPSEC and practical security.. are human. When an operation that has many moving parts, several official (and unofficial) stakeholders, and everyone performing/tasked a specific role..even in GOOD times there are miscommunications and "lag". Not to mention the fact that people are in different time zones. Anyone who's been in an organization (wether legal or illegal) knows that getting all the stakeholders on the same page, at the same time, with the same message can be hard. Now, take into account unknown variables thrown into the mix quite suddenly (Libertas's arrest for SR1 activities + DPR2 making a conscious decision to clean house and go dark), and now it becomes exponentially harder for everyone to be on the same page of the same script at the same time! Theres some tinfoil on the forums.. and that's always been the case. But please folks, also be realistic. DPR2 told Eiley from AllThingsVice that he was not gonna be sticking around. I'll get my head chopped off for speaking in detail about it, but from a techincal point, DPR2 did what he privately had said he'd do to allow contiuum from an admin POV. And most importantly, had DPR2 been comrpomised and/or taken, it'd be in the news. It's not, because thankfully he's not. Just know, that it does take certain amount of time coordinating with an entire team across different timezones, during the holidays, and making sure everyone sticks to the same plan agreed upon months ago.. it's not like people can jump on a conference call and wrap up the process steps in 15 minutes (on the heels of knowing 3 of your comarades just got busted worldwide). This is not IBM or Amazon. Someone mentioned "I saw this post and then it was deleted". Yes..because when you go back and read something or somebody elses catches somethign that shouldn't be publicly viewable and breaks opsec, it gets deleted! This place has eyes on it 24/7, make no mistake about it. There's a very brief window you get to remove something you realize would only give fuel to your enemy. Not sure how better I can spell it out for ya. Someone else brings up the point of "you were screaming and making a huge fuss in October, you were screaming and making a huge fuss a few days ago, etc etc" Right.. I'm laying it all out now. From the beginning, the goal was to have a "gruntled insider" (not staff) who was (to an outsider/LE's POV) close enough to people in official positions, yet was not worried about retribution/reprisal in case he did go rogue. Initially, the idea of having an actual staff member make grumblings and express misgivings seemed improbable.. but having a "friendly" who would teeter between "loyal" and "disgruntled" would be an interesting experiment in weeding out the enemies intentions, and also be a source of credibility in the event of a catasrophe, to buy everyone some time to regroup while creating a massive distraction. Most of you get this.. but that's the crux of the matter. And finally, the issue of "drama" & "threatrics": Someone wrote  And to be very frank, yes, I should have. I honestly didn't think about that, but that would have been spot on. I did make a few threads with "I will be making an important announcement" or "I will shed some light" .. but I should have taken it a step further and posted a SHA256 hash. You must realize, it's a monumental task doing damage assesment, coordinating with many people across many borders, and making sure everyone "sticks to the script" yet tweak it as you go. But come on guys, I think everyone did a pretty good job? I was posting at will, yet mods and Def weren't deleting my posts, and explicitly not adressing them/me. The goal was to seriously distract. Backstage however, there was a lot of back&forth on when to make sure all loose ends are tied up and the site infrastructure is sound. When I was told everything was triple tested and there's confidence that SR2 is fine, and the scope of the arrests were only SR1 related, and DPR2 was not compromised (and had taken certain measures to make sure Defcon has no issues), then I could kill the act. If I was really some lunatic Coachella type ( ).. you'd all know it by now. I'm just a friend with benefits I hope the community's at ease and knows that SR2 is completely safe, for the interm time period Defcon is running the show (and I can vouche for his/her competence as I have had complex conversations with him/her that date back months.. he/she knows their shit), Cirrus, ChemCa,t V, and DoctorClu are the only moderators that the community will deal with, and every one of these people is absolutely un-tainted/outside the scope of Ross/SR1 in any way. And the most important thing - EVERYONE is responsible for their own security! When the site resumes, or even during Christmas break on the forums, always, ALWAYS be pro-active with your security. Use PGP only, make sure javascript is turned off in Tor, think before you type, and maintain good OPSEC. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if 1 person or 10 people are running Silk Road. If you're practicing standard security you're pretty much 99.9999999% safe. You all have a Merry Christmas, while keeping our fallen comrades in your prayers and thoughts, and reflect hard on how amazing it is that we have such a brilliant thing known as "Silk Road" .. that's been tested and put under massive stress, yet it's still around and will hopefully be around a long time. And by Silk Road, I don't mean SR1 or SR2 or the site/forums/servers whatever. I really mean this fucking awesome community. Forum peeps,vendors, buyers, lurkers, jounrnalists, trolls and everyone else. We are part of living history.