- From it's humble beginnings, the Silk Road market was quickly populated with what has become a vibrant community full of interesting characters. From our superstar vendors and ever helpful mods to all of the active folks on the forum, the people here are truly awesome. Silk Road would not be what it is or possibly even exist without everyone who has stepped up along the way to point out security flaws, contribute their ideas, and take this experiment on as their own and stand with us. It didn't take long before word got out. Our little hidden market got the attention of the media and soon the politicians and law enforcement. But Silk Road was never meant to be private and exclusive. It is meant to grow into a force to be reckoned with that can challenge the powers that be and at last give people the option to choose freedom over tyranny. We fundamentally believe that people can thrive and prosper under these conditions and so far tens of thousands have done so in the Silk Road market. A revolution has been born. So ideally, more participants means more prosperity. What we've found in practice is that if there is an opportunity to cheat, steal or lie for personal short-term gain, someone, somewhere will exploit it. So, we've had two major challenges to face as Silk Road grows and evolves. One is making our systems tough enough and flexible enough to withstand and win a cyber-war with the most powerful organizations in the world, should they choose to start that war. This is always and ever a top priority. The other is making the market a place where people can quickly and easily buy and sell just about anything without worrying about being attacked by gun toting men in uniforms and thrown in a cage or worry about being ripped off by their trading partner. I am proud to say we have been successful in achieving these goals up to this point. The site remains up and functioning (despite a few screw ups on our part, like not having a full capacity backup server ready to go when a live server went down, and a poorly executed url switch, just to name a few). And, over 99% of all transactions conducted within the escrow system are completed to the satisfaction of both both buyer and seller, or a mutually agreed upon resolution is found. This success has in no way made us complacent however. New members are still being lured into trading outside of escrow by scammers and getting ripped off, and finalizing early, effectively cutting out the escrow process, is common practice. Still, I believe we can mitigate these risks and take our market to the next level in security, reliability, performance, and convenience for everyone involved. First we must deal with trading out of escrow. Up to this point we have charged a flat 6.23% commission on all trades. This is much too high for transactions in the $300 and over range, making trading out of escrow for large transactions much more attractive than staying within the system. Now, instead of charging a flat commission, we will charge a higher amount for low priced items and a lower amount for high priced items, similar to how eBay does it. We've worked hard to come up with a commission schedule that should work for everyone and will give scammers no excuse to make people send money outside of escrow. For some perspective, eBay and amazon charge the following rates: eBay  - $0.50 to list, 11% of the first $50, 6% of $50.01-1000, 2% of $1000.01+ amazon - $1.35 + 15% (for almost all items) We also went to the Silk Road independent sellers to see what they thought an appropriate commission schedule would look like. The average response looked like this: 15% of the first $10 11% of $10 - $50 8.14% of $50 - $250 5.6% of $250 - $1000 3.7% of $1000 - $5000 We looked at past sales data and our current and future revenue needs and were able to bring these numbers down even further: 10% of the first $50 8.5% of $50 - 150 6% of $150 - 300 3% of $300 - 500 2% of $500 - 1000 1.5% for everything over $1000 With this change, there are no phoney excuses whatsoever for vendors to ask for out of escrow payment. Any request should be interpreted as a scam attempt and reported to the Silk Road support team via the contact us link on the main site. We are looking at several mechanisms for enforcing the ban on OOE transactions, from self-policing to bounties on offenders. Together, we can beat the scammers and make the Silk Road market a place where you can buy with confidence and peace of mind. If we stay true to our principles of integrity, virtue, mutual respect and camaraderie that have guided us to this point, I believe our future is bright and this revolutionary experiment will be a success!  CLARIFICATION: The new policy regarding out of escrow transactions stated in this address does not affect a vendor's ability to ask their customers to finalize their orders and release payment before shipment. We still strongly recommend that buyers avoid doing this at all costs because we will be unable to protect you in case of fraud. CLARIFICATION: This new policy also does not affect vendors who use the market as a platform for Bitcoin exchange. They may continue to operate as usual, but again we strongly recommend that you purchase bitcoins through a non-anonymous vendor because the market is not set up to facilitate bitcoin exchange and your money can be stolen without recourse. FURTHER COMMENTARY: https://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion.to/index.php?topic=8539.0