Remember, Remember When the Silk Road 2.0's Launch Got Held Up?

It's being helmed by a few global moderators of the original Silk Road marketplace, and for that it has some advocates of anonymous deep-web commerce saying it'll be the closest, most official replacement to its namesake online drug bazaar. At least that's when the Silk Road 2.0 goes live.

Which was supposed to have already happened. At—when else?—4:20 PM UTC (11:20 AM EST) today, Tuesday, November 5, vendors and buyers scrambling for a return to something like normalcy were ready to once again dabble in all the batshit highs and lows of a still fractured dark web. Some had even registered on the site, which seems to have disabled any further registration for the moment. But as with any major website or actual road opening up above ground that's nevertheless still steamrolling a few nagging bumps, users should expect delays. Here, it's all about security.

"This will come as somewhat a disappointment to many of you," a SR 2.0 admin told (dark) users this morning, "but I believe it is necessary if we are to be secure from the start." The mod added:

We are currently considering adding hours to the launch time to allow us to continue fixing bugs and patching security holes that have been uncovered. In addition, it is likely we will disable the bitcoin process on launch until we can gauge the traffic more accurately - this is to protect your bitcoins as high traffic sites and bitcoin processes do not work well over Tor.

In other words, SR 2.0's admins, which include one "Libertas", a shadowy figure who was one the top moderators on the SR 1.0 (and who some even believe is the original DPR, or Dread Pirate Roberts), want to assure their userbase that yes, their bitcoin won't be compromised. You know, not like the founder of the so-called "next Tor market kingpin", who made off with all his users' money last week.

Tor, for its part, says its service is as secure as ever in the wake of the SR 1.0. And Bitcoin? The deep web's go-to cryptocurrency is seemingly unphased by the Feds nabbing Ross Ulbricht, the alleged founder of the SR 1.0. As of this writing, a single bitcoin is once again valued at around $250 USD. If anything, the delayed launch of what's far and away the slowest of the replacement bazaars to go "live" since the SR 1.0 was shuttered last month is probably a throw to what historically has been extremely difficult to get your hands on in the underbelly of the web: trust.

At least one Redditor claims, the SR 2.0 will now go live later this evening, at 23:30 UTC (6:30 PM EST). We'll keep an eye out, and will update accordingly. For now, Guy Fawkes' quartered remains are rolling in whatever ditch they were tossed in.

@thebanderson