How the mysterious dark net is going mainstream

The most valuable resource to both use and understand the Tor Browser and the Tor Hidden Services to which the browser provides access is the Tor Project’s own website. There you will find user guides, software updates, a history of the software, and much more.

For the most complete account of the original Silk Road, which was closed down by the FBI in late 2013, Eileen Ormsby’s book Silk Road is the best place to start. It’s full of original research, interviews and insight. This is best read along with her excellent blog, AllThingsVice, which covers several aspects of the dark net, but especially the dark net markets: http://allthingsvice.com/about/.

Cristin’s work was an innovative academic study of the volume of trading on the Silk Road in 2012.

Christin and Soska find that despite several successful take-downs by law enforcement, dark net markets remain vibrant and active.

Several independent researchers have taken to researching the dark net markets, and posting their work online. Since 2013, Gwern Branwen collected the item listings, customer feedback, images, forum posts and more of all English-language dark net markets – and made it all available for others to use for research. It’s 52GB of data, covering 89 markets and 37 forums. It’s easily the most significant and valuable data set about the dark net markets.

Because Tor Hidden Services are so new, many of the most useful and important pieces of work are journalistic. There are too many to summarize, but the articles by Joseph Cox at Motherboard – which often correct many misconceptions about the dark net – are required reading.

The story of the dark net markets are part of a much wider one about the development and growth of various tools of encryption – often developed for and used by whistleblowers. Greenberg’s book is an invaluable and very enjoyable guide to ‘cypherpunk’ technology and ideology, and the significance of the cypherpunk philosophy to whistleblowers. This is best read alongside, Steven Levy's "Crypto Rebels" in Wired and Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in a Digital Age. "Crypto Rebels" was the first mainstream account of the cypherpunks, while Crypto remains the best account of the movement overall.

Steven Levy's "Crypto Rebels" was the first mainstream account of the cypherpunks.

The idea of a dark net market – where anonymous browsers and crypto-currencies could be used to make a perfectly pure and untraceable marketplace for anything – was perhaps first imagined by Tim May, one of the leaders of the 1990s cypherpunk movement. Tim May’s book-length essay, providing an excellent insight into the cypherpunk philosophy.

For the technically minded, David Chaum’s paper ‘Security Without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete’ is perhaps the most important single document in terms of understanding the mathematics of the cypherpunk movement.

Most of the Cypherpunk and Metzdowd Cryptography Mailing List posts are archived and available online.