Silk Road forums
Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: thetruth20 on August 05, 2012, 01:52 am
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(Submitted on 31 Jul 2012)
We perform a comprehensive measurement analysis of Silk Road, an anonymous, international online marketplace that operates as a Tor hidden service and uses Bitcoin as its exchange currency. We gather and analyze data over eight months between the end of 2011 and 2012, including daily crawls of the marketplace for nearly six months in 2012. We obtain a detailed picture of the type of goods being sold on Silk Road, and of the revenues made both by sellers and Silk Road operators. Through examining over 24,400 separate items sold on the site, we show that Silk Road is overwhelmingly used as a market for controlled substances and narcotics. A relatively small "core" of about 60 sellers has been present throughout our measurement interval, while the majority of sellers leaves (or goes "underground") within a couple of weeks of their first appearance. We evaluate the total revenue made by all sellers to approximately USD 1.9 million per month; this corresponds to about USD 143,000 per month in commissions perceived by the Silk Road operators. We further show that the marketplace has been operating steadily, with daily sales and number of sellers overall increasing over the past few months. We discuss economic and policy implications of our analysis and results, including ethical considerations for future research in this area.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.7139
Apologies if this was already posted, haven't seen it yet if it was. Interesting study by Cornell University Computer Science Dept regarding our growing marketplace.
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(Submitted on 31 Jul 2012)
Through examining over 24,400 separate items sold on the site, we show that Silk Road is overwhelmingly used as a market for controlled substances and narcotics.
The next study aims to show that water is wet.
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From the paper: (re: Intervention strategies)
Laissez-faire. Finally, a last possible intervention strategy is actually not to intervene. Politically, this is a questionable proposition, as it may sound as an admission of weakness. There are however studies that show that drug abuse prevention is considerably more cost-efficient than enforcing drug prohibition [9]. The relatively rapidly expanding business of online anonymous markets such as Silk Road and the logistic difficulties in shutting down such markets may further tilt the economic balance toward prevention and cure. As a result, laissez-faire, however untenable it might currently appear from a policy standpoint, might become even more attractive in light of budget constraints. Although there is no public statement about it, this could be the strategy currently adopted by law enforcement, seeing that the marketplace has not met any significant disruption to its operations, other than transient technical issues, in the past nine months, while at the same time sales volumes have doubled.
I am very pleased to see the researchers acknowledging this as a potential "solution". This is what I hope for.
It's a very interesting paper that should be read by everyone with more than a passing interest in the Silk Road.
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This is really very interesting and I'm not even half-way through. I'd recommend it to everyone here as valentinesmith said.
No mention of Limetless's landrover yet though :(
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Nice to see a non-sensationalized, academic paper. Fuck Gawker. Gotta hand it to Cornell - they've always allowed for freedom of thought in academia.
Also, Ithaca was the site of the hottest Grateful Dead show ever recorded.
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Couldn't agree more with valentinesmith, sselevol and bigscrote - have only been around for a short time, but this is a must read, especially for those with a bent towards analysis - most interesting finding to me was that there are several dozen vendors who have been around for the duration, but that most show up and then drop out after 4-8 weeks. My first thought is that's due to realizing how much work (and risk) there really is to be a vendor, but the paper lists a couple other possibilities, like scams and one-time scores...whatever the reason, it just reinforces the advice I keep seeing to always use escrow.
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So there are 4 vendors who've been around for more than 100 days and haven't made any sales? :o
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great post, thank you
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excellent reading, thanks !
Just a glitch with the categories I hope didn't influence the data that much:
why having "weed" on top (3338), then "drugs"(2207), then "cannabis" and then "hash" ? It seems the "WEED" section is mistaken, right ? f
Weed 3338 13.7%
Drugs 2207 9.0%
Prescription 1784 7.3%
Benzos 1193 4.9%
Books 955 3.9%
Cannabis 880 3.6%
Hash 821 3.4%
Cocaine 633 2.6%
Pills 473 1.9%
Blotter 441 1.8%
Money 406 1.7%
MDMA (ecstasy) 393 1.6%
Erotica 385 1.6%
Steroids, PEDs 376 1.5%
Seeds 375 1.5%
Heroin 370 1.5%
Opioids 344 1.4%
DMT 343 1.4%
Stimulants 292 1.2%
Digital goods 261 1.1%
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I believe the 'drugs' category is for everything that's listed under drugs, and not one of it's sub-categories
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It's nice to see an academic review of the road. Will have to read the entire article later.
And way to go DPR keep rolling in those bitcoins :D :D
There are items listed under drugs, but not under a sub category.
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nice find!
and holy shit:
Silk Road operators have seen their commissions increase from roughly USD 3,000/day in March 2012 to roughly USD 6,000/day in July 2012.
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Being watched are we ? 8)
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Being watched are we ? 8)
Yer, I wonder how exactly they got all that information? I don't know the first thing about hacking, or how computers and computer networks really work.
Could anyone enlighten me as to how (in general) this data could be collected from Silk Road.
On a different point, I'd have to say it's not really my concern how much DPR (and his team?) make from Silk Road.
I do know that he (they?) deserves every penny he makes. Long live Silk Road.
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Says in the paper they used a crawler robot, they even say which one, though I don't recall off the top of my head -- it's the same kind of thing Google uses to pull all the content from all the pages on all the websites that don't specifically block that sort of activity so that they can index the web and allow us to find stuff. They also mentioned the time(s) of day when the did their "crawls", think it was between 10pm and 2am or so when they started (they varied it), and said it took several hours each day to complete the data gathering.
Anyhow, their technique aside, the data was pretty informative, as it showed volumes and trends, and allowed some estimation of money-flows. And unfortunately, these kinds of papers, when released, lead to increased media coverage -- it's already started w/Forbes and New Scientist, and only a matter of time, likely days, before someone puts up a story on one of the major news networks. I hope that's not the case, maybe jumping the gun, but that's just how these types of things typically play out.
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Please remember to setup an unnetworked virtual machine to view files if you download PDFs like this one. PDFs can potentially deanonymize you or contain LE malware.
-- Paranoid Pine
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Remove the URL link to the sold item in the vendor feedback page and analysis like this would be prevented.