14 DAY TRIAL // Unsurprisingly, the hole left by the destruction of the Silk Road online drug marketplace is being filled fast. Several other existing sites got a boost after its demise, but there's now a Silk Road 2.0 to continue from where Silk Road left off.
Obviously, the new site doesn't really have much to do with the original one or, more specifically, with the people running it.
But the new owners are looking to recreate the look and feel of the old site. Silk Road 2.0 is virtually identical to the old one, and the administrator is even using the Dread Pirate Roberts screen name that alleged Silk Road owner Ross Ulbricht also used.
"Over the last 4 weeks, we have implemented a complete security overhaul. This overhaul marks the dawn of a brand new era for hidden services, and it would not have been possible without the patient support of this community," the new Dread Pirate Roberts told users in a message on the new site.
"It took the FBI two and a half years to do what they did. Divide, conquer and eliminate was their strategy… but four weeks of temporary silence is all they got. And as our resilient community bounces back even stronger than ever before, never forget that they can only ever seize assets – they can never arrest our spirit, our ideas or our passion, unless we let them. We will not let them," he added.
For now, it's just old users that are being let in, though they can invite others if they choose to. The site boasts some new protection measures, like the option to use a unique encryption key to stay safe, but some of the technical changes still aren't being made clear. This, obviously, on top of the fact that the site can only be accessed via the TOR network.