Hurdles to Tor hidden services for physical goods
THS = Tor hidden services
Tor hidden services is an internet protocol which facilitates communication between two parties without either of them disclosing their IP address to each other or a trusted third party. It is used by tor to allow servers to operate without clients needing to know their ip address in order to connect.
A physical instantiation of THS would be a protocol which allows for physical goods to be transferred between two parties without either party needing to know the location of the other, nor able to easily discover it. Such a protocol would lessen the trust buyers must place in DNM vendors and other physical agorist markets. This is because buyers would no longer be at risk of the vendor leaking/reporting/disclosing the buyer’s postage address.
- Differences between physical and digital THS
- payload is encrypted in digital THS but not physical THS
- harder to claim accidental possession if contraband is unencrypted
- payload can be inspected by state-controlled infrastructure in physical but not digital THS
- cost to user of payload “drops” is high in physical THS but low in digital THS
- incentive for relays to steal payload is high in physical THS but low in digital THS
- cost and difficulty of running physical THS node is much higher than running digital THS node
- payload is encrypted in digital THS but not physical THS
- Similarities
- both require relays to have possession of and to transmit/traffic (in some sense) potentially illegal material
- both physical and digital THS can facilitate regulatory arbitrage by way of employing relays only in friendly jurisdictions
- in both, identification of payload recipient by sender is hampered
- due to high coordination/collusion costs
- due to circuit relays being controlled by multiple randomly selected individuals in multiple jurisdictions
- due to high coordination/collusion costs
- both require some jurisdiction to exist which allows for nodes to operate
- Misc notes
- The advantage of physical THS over dead drops is that dead drops place very little between the sender and the recipient
- therefore making the recipient vulnerable to identification by a malicious/state-allied sender
- web of trust reputation can mitigate theft risks of physical THS
- The advantage of physical THS over dead drops is that dead drops place very little between the sender and the recipient
- Possible project
- A decentralised tor hidden services protocol
- using
- dead drops
- postage systems
- web of trust reputation system
- every hop is managed by the sender of the item
- transporters specify if the item is in a good state when they pick it up
- so that the previous transporter can be given a bad reputation
- using
- To facilitate agorism.
- A decentralised tor hidden services protocol
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Distbit
Interested in econ, cryptoecon, agents, finance, epistemology, liberty.