Silk Road Forums

I am the only member of staff who can access your personal messages and I have not edited any of your messages. Some items however are on the filter in which case you will see a message such as [REDACTED - xxx] where xxx is the reason for it being automatically redacted, there is no "censor message" or edited several days later as it is always done before the information is saved onto the disks. I do not ever aimlessly read through messages, they are only accessed when somebody brings it to my attention.

If you aren't happy with something in the filter then you can message me with the reasons why it shouldn't be there. But to clarify, doxxing any person is not allowed here and I have redacted addresses, ZIP codes and phone numbers.

P.S: It is an honor to be corrected by you my captain. My eyes are not even worthy to look upon your words I will rip them out of my own skull posthaste

We are all still equals, nobody is infallible.

Wallets for deposit and purchasing will be rolled out shortly yes.

Can't beat a nice ass and a nice rack.

The bitcoin system right now will work in the same way but different orientation that the old Silk Road market did as the previous market did not mix coins, it simply made it impossible for X to determine who Y is so as a buyer you could not determine which withdrawal belonged to which vendor and which deposit belongs to which buyer. The idea that Silk Road mixed their coins in comparison to popular perception is incorrect, it did not protect you from an adversary being able to determine you used Silk Road if you don't take additional measures just as our temporary measure will be.

Our mixing system which will be implemented only days after launch will be very sophisticated and is designed to stifle adversaries from being able to determine which action is a withdrawal, which is a deposit or that the funds are even part of Silk Road and we have somebody who has already helped us solve how to do this as he was one of the best minds for the job in the dark net.

This issue should have been resolved 2 days ago, we'll add it to our list to look into in a few hours.

In the last few weeks the staff team has been very strained and given the speed at which we have been required to move to respond to issues and also accommodate for the huge returning vendor base which requires pretty strict verification procedures, we are short enough on time and hands already. Following a burst of activity from Coachella and several other known trolls, my decision to close registration was not taken lightly but it had to be done in order to maintain a forum which was not laced with trolls, spam and misinformation whilst we dealt with accruing issues.

The invitation system was implemented by request of users - it was the user base who ultimately called for the system to allow more users to join at a controlled rate and I have done what I can to widely distribute invites and we have not yet seen the return of the residential troll so the tactic so far has been effective since it limits the potential for damage and distraction.

Some of the above is true - moderators cannot see the invitation links but users and myself can, and it is certainly true this could be used to profile users by creating a web of people. However, there is no requirement to invite people and if you are not comfortable doing so you only need to not hand out invites - the tradeoff for OPSEC versus bringing whomever to the forum is therefore passed onto the user, I am not enforcing poor decisions on you just as how a user chooses to use PGP or not as I have said repeatedly there are a lot of invite codes posted on my Twitter which you can direct people to and indeed many people have taken advantage of this already.

The invite system is a temporary measure, but it will remain in place until we are properly up and running the site so we can focus more on those developments and the moderators processing users than have to clean up after a very persistent and annoying troll. When free time becomes more readily available, we will look at what options we have, but until then our only alternative is to close registration entirely which is a situation I personally feel is not beneficial to anything whereas the invitation system is a go-between for now.

However, to address the very question in the topic thread - the invitation system does not harm anonymity in itself. The only way in which it can harm it is if you as a user fail to take proper measures to protect it, so for example you use the same forum name to order on the market in plaintext for both the inviting user and the invitee. In this environment, we are all anonymous and I cannot stop people not being responsible for themselves to stay safe and so even if this system is in place there is no reason it should compromise anonymity unless you have already done so yourself and that is the distinction I make between the potential harm versus the benefit in the circumstances we are in right now.

How we move forward is still open for debate, but this culture of criticizing the system no matter what the state has to end, we need to actually hear some plans being put forth which are not the typical followings (ie close registration, open registration) since we have tried that and have come under even more criticism than the current state. So until a better idea is put forth where we can see greater support and realistic pros and cons which are in the interest of the circumstances, we will have to stick with the invite system which remains optional should you personally wish to make that tradeoff. This is going to draw criticism yes, but I ask you to consider the alternatives and appreciate the situation we now face.

Bug fixes are taking priority right now so we aren't late, we are reshuffling the work order. We don't feel it would be appropriate to open the site to deposits or trades until we knew our platform was highly secure. The new version of the Wiki is currently up and being populated by the moderators so I will wait to see when they have finished before publishing it.