If we're going to see the markets moving toward more direct sales over Torchat, BM, e-mail, etc. it would be nice to have some centralized places wherein interested parties could enter information on a vendor and get back customer reviews. Safeorscam.com does this for online pharmacies and RC sellers and the Majestic Garden offers a venue for psychedelics sellers. But the Grand Wizard doesn't know of any place where one could learn more about direct-deal sellers of other products or substances, or where new sellers could introduce themselves.
If anyone has any pointers on where such a site exists, or on how one might create one, the Grand Wizard would love to learn more. It appears that we can post reviews of direct-mail sales on /r/darknetmarkets although we can't make or request direct offers. Something along that model with a bit more leeway for sellers to solicit buyers and buyers sellers might work. The Grand Wizard also wonders about an IRC-over-TOR channel that functioned like #bitcoin_OTC, with a bot creating and maintaining a web of trust for parties on both sides of the equation.
There are obvious issues here. We're already under constant threat of Reddit shutting down /r/darknetmarkets altogether for ToS violations. Allowing people to come in with "Hi, I'm Frank and I Want to be YOUR Heroin Dealer" posts would probably push them over the edge. And the Grand Wizard isn't entirely sure how much liability someone might accrue simply for having admin privileges in an IRC channel devoted to drug sales or creating a bot which facilitated same.
Right now the biggest problem with direct sales is trust. And since the number of direct-to-customer vendors is only going to increase in the future, the Grand Wizard suggests we should start thinking about this problem now.
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