Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

OpenBazaar is a decentralized Dark Net market that's 'untouchable' by police

dailydot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 113 posts

Re: OpenBazaar is a decentralized Dark Net market that's 'untouchable' by police

#41

Post by SamPatt »

paulhauggis wrote: post #38

For my business, I order thousands of items on Amazon and Ebay per week. Even with the protections in place, sellers don't ship the items and then never respond/won't refund, I get the wrong items/broken items (and they refuse to let me send it back). Why would I shop anywhere without these assurances?

OpenBazaar uses 2-of-3 multisig, meaning that the buyer doens't send funds directly to the seller but instead sends it to a Bitcoin account that is jointly controlled by three parties; the buyer, the seller, and a trusted third party called a notary. Both parties agree to the notary, and then in order for the funds to be released from the multisig, any two parties must agree on how the funds are released.

In a normal transaction, once the item ships and is received, both the buyer and seller agree to the transaction and funds are released. If there is a problem, then that third party enters the picture, and sends funds from the multisig by agreeing with either buyer or seller.

Re: OpenBazaar is a decentralized Dark Net market that's 'untouchable' by police

#42

Post by pmorici »

Touche wrote: post #25
jasode wrote: post #17

I see several comments questioning the legitimate value of a peer-to-peer marketplace. Some cannot see any use other than illegal commerce (drugs, porn, etc). It is true that such illicit trades will take advantage of that network but is it really impossible to envision legal business as the major activity? Yes, cars can be used as getaway vehicles from bank robberies and also smash terrorist bombs into government bu…

Why does a distributed marketplace intended for legal trade need to run on Tor? Do you need anonymity if you're selling towels?

Using Tor isn't required.

Re: OpenBazaar is a decentralized Dark Net market that's 'untouchable' by police

#44

Post by adrusi »

Touche wrote: post #25
jasode wrote: post #17

I see several comments questioning the legitimate value of a peer-to-peer marketplace. Some cannot see any use other than illegal commerce (drugs, porn, etc). It is true that such illicit trades will take advantage of that network but is it really impossible to envision legal business as the major activity? Yes, cars can be used as getaway vehicles from bank robberies and also smash terrorist bombs into government bu…

Why does a distributed marketplace intended for legal trade need to run on Tor? Do you need anonymity if you're selling towels?

I'm not familiar with the architecture of openbazaar, but whereas with centralized services like amazon and ebay only your credit card and the marketplace have access to your full history (and people tend to trust these entities, begrudgingly or not), in a p2p model, the marketplace is everyone in the network. While for most people its reasonable to trust a reputable organization for their legal transactions, very few people would be comfortable letting any scriptkiddie with an hour of time analyze the public network activity and get access to their entire purchase history. In order to avoid this drawback of a p2p architecture, additional privacy guards must be used.

Re: OpenBazaar is a decentralized Dark Net market that's 'untouchable' by police

#45

Post by killerpopiller »

rayiner wrote: post #20
Jukelox wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your fears are purely speculative and are distracting from what's really going on here. We are witnessing a demand for unregulated markets because regulated markets are way too slow in responding to social changes. Let's face it - governmental decisions are made in the best interest of influential parties, not in the best interests of the individual. Do not protect me from myself.

Nobody is protecting you from yourself. They're trying to protect other people from the damage you can do as an addict, a child pornographer, or a terrorist.

you are right, but child porn and addicts are already in the world. You fear addicts for good reasons. But if one looks how countries which legalized drugs are doing, you will see that violence, crime and number of addicts are decreasing.

e.g. Portugal: - Drug use among adolescents (13-15 yrs) and "problematic" users declined.[15] - Drug-related criminal justice workloads decreased.[15] - Decreased street value of most illicit drugs, some significantly

(although recreational (soft) drug use seemed to increase)

Re: OpenBazaar is a decentralized Dark Net market that's 'untouchable' by police

#46

Post by click170 »

SamPatt wrote: post #41
paulhauggis wrote: post #38

For my business, I order thousands of items on Amazon and Ebay per week. Even with the protections in place, sellers don't ship the items and then never respond/won't refund, I get the wrong items/broken items (and they refuse to let me send it back). Why would I shop anywhere without these assurances?

OpenBazaar uses 2-of-3 multisig, meaning that the buyer doens't send funds directly to the seller but instead sends it to a Bitcoin account that is jointly controlled by three parties; the buyer, the seller, and a trusted third party called a notary. Both parties agree to the notary, and then in order for the funds to be released from the multisig, any two parties must agree on how the funds are released. In a normal…

Thank you for clarifying.

The buyer and seller both get a say in who the notary is, correct? What if they can't agree on a trusted notary? Is it possible to have more than one notary (eg 3 notaries requiring 4 people in agreement for a large transaction?)

Re: OpenBazaar is a decentralized Dark Net market that's 'untouchable' by police

#47

Post by killerpopiller »

Touche wrote: post #5
killerpopiller wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we should push OpenBazar into the illegal drug corner. It is a neutral tech and follows the decentralization vector the internet opened. Amazon, Ebay, alibaba and so on, all could very well get absorbed by an open bazar concept. This happened imho to bittorrent, which remains in the piracy corner, even though it is brillant tech solution. E.g. BTSync still has this reputation problem (besides missing op…

What need is there for selling non-illegal things in a darknet market? Let's be honest, OpenBazaar will be used to sell drugs, stolen ids, and other illicit things.

if one would have introduced back in the days the concept of the internet with it's possiblities, it's positive effects and it's dark side - it wouldn't have happened!

People would have declared it a danger, a lawless non-place which poisons the youth and will be dominated by child porn and surely not by kitten pics.

Re: OpenBazaar is a decentralized Dark Net market that's 'untouchable' by police

#48

Post by jeangenie »

dionyziz wrote: post #35
Touche wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does a distributed marketplace intended for legal trade need to run on Tor? Do you need anonymity if you're selling towels?

OpenBazaar developer here. This is the "nothing to hide" argument that we've seen used to much by the NSA and governments. The answer is that we believe people simply have the right to privacy in trade. Here's a discussion by the OpenBazaar team on the matter: https://github.com/OpenBazaar/OpenBazaar/issues/189 Do you want your credit card company to know exactly where you've shopped for the past two years? Would you…

Well said!

Re: OpenBazaar is a decentralized Dark Net market that's 'untouchable' by police

#49

Post by doctorfoo »

krapp wrote: post #34
jasode wrote: post #17

I see several comments questioning the legitimate value of a peer-to-peer marketplace. Some cannot see any use other than illegal commerce (drugs, porn, etc). It is true that such illicit trades will take advantage of that network but is it really impossible to envision legal business as the major activity? Yes, cars can be used as getaway vehicles from bank robberies and also smash terrorist bombs into government bu…

>Can a more open platform for sellers without the stigma of illegal activity be realized? Probably not. Cars weren't invented to make bank robberies more difficult to stop. These networks were invented, to a degree which shouldn't be dismissed when considering their acceptance by the mainstream, to make enforcing laws against trading in anything more difficult, if not impossible. I think most people (not most people…

I think you underestimate the average Joe's desire to save a few dollars... The key barriers I see are having to install special software and getting to grips with Bitcoin.

Perhaps it is possible to ship a client with some default blacklisting of certain products, sellers etc, if a person wants to avoid stumbling by accident across such stuff. (Maybe even such blacklists would become updated and mandated by law.)

Re: OpenBazaar is a decentralized Dark Net market that's 'untouchable' by police

#50

Post by gwern »

Keep in mind, a lot of people are hyping OpenBazaar more than it deserves or is helpful. The basic question about OB no one has answered is: assuming they get it up and running and with a good security model, why will the mass of black-market - or legal - users ever use it, when using Amazon or something is easier and more familiar?

You may say that they'll use it so they don't have to worry about police, except black-market users' revealed preferences are that they don't care: SR2 was doing millions a month without any escrow at all, and multisig usage is uncommon even on the markets which support it (vendors generally estimate <10%). The users seem to simply not care. Why are they going to use OB?

Post reply on HN