Show HN: my weekend project, understanding the Silk Road anonymous marketplace

http://burntbrunch.github.com/Silk-Rabbit-Hole/html/

by archivator • 15 years ago

40 34 15 years ago

burntbrunch.github.com

This was more of a sandbox to play with Raphael and Flot than anything else but I think there are some interesting statistics in there. It'd be awesome to do this over time but I really don't have the spare time required.

rickyconnolly• 15 years ago

Nice bar charts. How were they made?

xeno56• 15 years ago

Looks like jquery.flot was used from glancing at the source http://code.google.com/p/flot/

toyg• 15 years ago

Note that the data is heavily skewed -- 77% of all SR listings apparently are for one UK seller, who probably just had the misfortune to pick that day to flog his wares. You'd need to automate data retrieval and average it over a few months to get a better picture.

(edit: listings, not transactions; thanks archivator for the correction)

archivator2• 15 years ago

You mean the listings are heavily skewed - this is not about transactions but listed items on the marketplace.

jerguismi• 15 years ago

Interesting data to scrape would be the reviews. Since the reviews are tied to the actual sales, it could give some kind of estimate what kind of sales volume we are talking about.

leeHS8• 15 years ago

Wow, this is pretty interesting. Perhaps you should approach Interpol and see if they would be interested in funding further development? http://www.interpol.int/en

leeHS8• 15 years ago

To the down-voters. I had not considered that my suggestion could negatively impact your drug sales. My sincerest sarcastic apologies

archivator2• 15 years ago

The reason you're getting downvoted may be related to the fact that this is not data Interpol would be in the least interested in. What they need are actual transactions/shipments/links to people, not some rather shallow stats extracted from a month-old copy of listings.

I'd be really impressed if someone actually runs a Bitcoin client that correlates transactions with prices from SR. Since most sellers select prices in USD, the values in BC are usually not nice and round. Then, you could start creating a profile of Bitcoin users and link them with given certainty to SR accounts. Now, that might be of interest to Interpol/local agencies.

drivebyacct24• 15 years ago

Oh thank god you're here to police what I (am able to buy and then) put in my own body. Your sarcasm is self righteous and doesn't flatter you.

omouse5• 15 years ago

Do you realize how much funding law enforcement agencies around the world get? They can do their own damn jobs.

leeHS8• 15 years ago

I am in law enforcement. This is not always the case.

feydr• 15 years ago

it's a total shame people have to resort to markets like this -- let's have a bar chart comparing the number of murders in a war sponsored by the US to the number of overdoses from drugs

adgar2• 15 years ago

Are you serious? Extremely few people "resort to this." The Silk Road is absolutely miniscule compared to the overall drug market.

I'm willing to bet that if I asked every person in my 5-floor walkup, I'd come out with a list of dealers comparable in size to the silk road.

stfu• 15 years ago

So there is a total of just about ~50-80 sellers? I guess most bigger cities have far more drug sellers than Silk Road. But I would love to see more timeline based developments, i.e. if the market is shrinking or expanding etc. Otherwise great weekend project!

adgar2• 15 years ago

Bigger cities? Hell, there were more than 50 dealers at my college alone. It had 4,000 students and was several hours from any metropolitan area to speak of.

Then again, the selection probably doesn't compare to the Silk Road or other services.

yuvipanda• 15 years ago

Interesting. I didn't know India was well represented there...

mmaunder• 15 years ago

How is payment received and goods delivered? Since you can't ship goods and take delivery via Tor it seems absurd to use strong encryption for communication when you're so vulnerable taking delivery. I haven't used silk road so I might be missing something, but I'd love to learn how they get around that.

sneak• 15 years ago

Payment is done primarily with Bitcoin. Goods are delivered primarily using the post (and rubber gloves).

wcoenen• 15 years ago

Payment is done with bitcoin. For the delivery, I think the idea is that even if the package is intercepted and your address is on it, it cannot be proven that you actually ordered it.

I don't know if such a defense would hold up. It might depend on local laws. But it does make sense because otherwise you could get your enemies into trouble just by sending them unwanted illegal goods.

Show HN: my weekend project, understanding the Silk Road anonymous marketplace

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