The Silk Road's Dark-Web Dream Is Dead
Yeah, I guess, like all &quot;countercultural&quot; revolutions, the dark markets ran out of steam a bit.
So did Bitcoin.<p>But the paradigm has shifted. Dark markets are possible.<p>We now know a lot about the risks&#x2F;benefits of such marketplaces.<p>What&#x27;s missing is a solid technological implementation of a distributed, peer-to-peer, trust-less marketplace. 
It&#x27;s possible to do it, it&#x27;s just not that easy.<p>An even better alternative would be total drug legalization.<p>Personally, I think that drugs are good for society more than they are bad and most of the &quot;negative&quot; effects of drugs comes from the prohibition itself.<p>Full legalization would create a true marketplace and the &quot;bad&quot; drugs would be slowly rejected by the market.
It would also allow us to openly and professionally deal with the consequences of drug abuse, addiction, etc..<p>Countries like Portugal have done that (to a more or less acceptable extent) and the results are remarkable.<p>Combine legal drugs with modern e-commerce technologies + reputation systems and we&#x27;ve practically &quot;solved&quot; the drug problem. Welcome to the Brave New world ;).