In 2025, darknet marketplaces primarily accept Monero (XMR) and Bitcoin (BTC). Privacy-focused operators are shifting to Monero due to its default anonymity, compared to Bitcoin’s transparent ledger Darknet markets see BTC inflow drop to $2B. The best way to protect yourself from the dangers of darknet markets is to simply avoid them altogether.
Crypto Security & Fraud
These innovations have transformed darknet markets into sophisticated ecosystems that cater to the needs of a diverse user base. The combination of Tor integration and user-centric design has set a new standard for secure online trade, ensuring that these platforms remain at the forefront of the digital economy. The evolution of darknet markets has been significantly influenced by the seamless integration of Tor networks and the development of user-friendly interfaces. These advancements have not only enhanced accessibility but also improved the overall user experience, making secure online trade more efficient and reliable. While there are legitimate products and services in the darknet markets, often, these markets deal with illicit goods and services like drugs, fake documents, and hacking services. Their presence can make you wonder why darknet markets and not just the regular online stores.
AlphaBay Market
- The anonymity and encryption provided in dark markets create a haven for cybercriminals and nation-state actors to buy and sell dangerous assets while evading detection.
- Moreover, we do not have information about which users trade with other users on the same DWM.
- With 25,000+ users and 3,000+ vendors, it’s the gold standard for escrow security and scale.
- The analysed dataset includes about 31 million transactions among more than 16 million users.
- He said the proceeds from ransomware attacks, as well as investment schemes, violent extremism and child sexual abuse material, are also being laundered through Russian darknet markets.
- Though Genesis Market domains and servers were seized and antivirus programs have been updated, cybercriminals have already rebuilt illicit services like these.
In many cases, fear of arrest prompts administrators to run exit scams before enforcement action becomes public. Constant uncertainty, fear of scams, and enforcement pressure create sustained stress. Reputation scores and user feedback guide buyer decisions in the absence of real-world verification.
Hoaxes and unverified content
Likewise, law enforcement agencies each day continue to fine-tune their strategies to get past these networks. The first thing on the minds of many users when it comes to the dark web environment is illegal drugs. In fact, the Guardian referred to darknet markets as “the eBay of drug dealing,” and rightly so, illegal drugs are found in almost all the shops on the dark web. The raw dataset consists in transactions between Bitcoin addresses, which is initially preprocessed by Chainalysis Inc. (see Section S2). The resulting dataset consists in transactions between entities, that group together clusters of Bitcoin addresses.
Platform
Thus, use the best antivirus software that protects against these online threats. However, in April 2022, this site went offline after American and German federal government law enforcement agencies seized the website servers. Some alternative links are available, providing access to the marketplace. It’s recommended not to use new alternative links, as they could just be planned exit scams. Besides this, it supports wallet-less transactions and accepts payments through Bitcoin, Litecoin, Monero, and Zcash. However, you must wait some time to reassess this marketplace because it’s been shut down.
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Between June 1 and June 27, 2025, average daily deposits to Abacus totaled USD 230,000 across 1,400 transactions, but this plummeted to just USD 13,000 across 100 deposits from June 28 to July 10, 2025. Welcome to this collection of darknet resources, curated exclusively for educational and informational purposes. This repository serves as a knowledge hub for individuals interested in understanding the structure, functionalities, and applications of the darknet. Please note that all material provided here is aimed at promoting awareness, responsible research, and ethical use of information.
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Ransomware groups are anticipated to split into smaller, independent units, making them harder to track. Such decentralization, along with the reuse of leaked malware source codes, will allow new, low-skilled actors to enter the ransomware ecosystem. Infostealers and drainers will likely be increasingly promoted as subscription-based services, with traffers aiding in their distribution via scam pages and phishing schemes. Cybercriminals are expected to exploit trusted company-contractor relationships, breaching contractor systems to access corporate data. This tactic, seen in 2024 with incidents involving Ticketmaster and IntelBroker, could lead to an overall rise in data breaches. Premium private cryptors are gaining traction, emphasizing the shift toward exclusive malware solutions.
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- In some countries, like Russia or China, dark web access itself may be blocked or penalized.
- It hosts over 40,000 listings and offers everything from illicit goods and substances to hacking tools.
- We showed that a small fraction of traders is responsible for a large fraction of the trading volume, and by analysing the networks of buyers and sellers, we found different resilience regimes.
- The surge stems from weak local enforcement, widespread use of streamlined crypto payments, and a digital space valuing privacy.
- Platforms like SecureDrop enable individuals to submit documents and communicate securely with journalists, thereby exposing corruption and wrongdoings while preserving their anonymity.
- Law enforcement seized substantial evidence, including 47 smartphones, 45 computers and notebooks, eight mobile phones, four computers, and 34 data storage devices from the primary suspect’s locations.
The report did, however, present some more positive figures, including a year-over-year decline in revenue from crypto-based scams. Although scams remain one of the biggest drivers of crypto-based crime, with $4.6 billion in revenue for 2023, the figure was down from the previous year’s $5.9 billion. As Hydra did, many of these markets have continued the tradition of including drug harm reduction information for drug buyers, such as providing drug testing and medical advice. “The RuTor forum has launched a series of webinars on medical topics, including first aid and overdose scenarios,” said Aleksey Lakhov, of St. Petersburg-based drug project Drugmap.ru. But Russians fleeing the country since the war have still been able to buy drugs on the dark web.
Use cryptocurrency for transactions
ProPublica is an investigative news site owned by an independent nonprofit that exposes abuses of power and corruption. It hosts an onion site so people in countries with restricted press freedom can access its journalism, which covers everything from hacktivism to government repression. On the dark web, traffic is routed through multiple server nodes that don’t log activity, obscuring the user’s origin and enabling anonymous communication. Lawmakers and platforms alike will need to decide what responsibility they’re willing to accept. TRM Labs reported that TRON accounted for 58% of illicit crypto activity in 2024, followed by Ethereum at 24% and Bitcoin at 12%. By utilizing crypto transactions, these cartels can efficiently fund and facilitate the production of fentanyl, which is then trafficked into the United States, contributing to the ongoing opioid crisis.
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In 2023, Chainalysis discovered that some popular fraud shops rely on payment processors as a way to reduce their own costs, add efficiency to their operations, and perhaps add a layer of security to transactions. Genesis Market extensively used a payment processor called UAPS, so much that the processor’s average inflows fell by 25.7% after Genesis closed last April. Regardless, UAPS remains a key provider of payment infrastructure to top fraud shops. Customer reviews found on the Abacus site indicate that some of its American vendors sell drug products laced with fentanyl. The most recent example is the shutdown of the oldest marketplace Hydra Market in 2022 which took a combined effort of the FBI and the German authorities. Unfortunately, that as well didn’t stop other darknet markets from rising.
How to Prevent Phishing Attacks?
He said the proceeds from ransomware attacks, as well as investment schemes, violent extremism and child sexual abuse material, are also being laundered through Russian darknet markets. Empire is one of the two biggest darknet markets globally, the other being Russia’s Hydra market. Launched in February 2018; the Empire market is heavily inspired by Alphabay, with LTC, BTC, XMR, PGP 2FA, and MultiSig features. Hansa was an online darknet market which operated on a hidden service of the Tor network. Archetyp Market functioned as a Tor-based hidden service, accessible only through specialized darknet browsers that utilize onion routing protocols to anonymize user traffic and location data. Facebook’s onion mirror allows people to access it in countries that block the platform, allowing people to connect across digital borders.
Espionage and National Security Threats
- Despite using a VPN, there’s always a risk of the VPN leaking your IP address through DNS or WebRTC leaks or misconfigurations when on a dark web forum or marketplace.
- All the payments were made through cryptocurrency, further enhancing marketplace anonymity.
- The chart above shows that, while values haven’t risen back to 2021 levels, darknet market revenue has slightly rebounded since Hydra’s closure in 2022.
- To prevent users from DDoS attacks, it provides personal marketplace domains to high-volume buyers and sellers.
- The market offers things like malware, fake documents, and financial fraud services.
- The number of sellers in each category and multisellers as a function of time is shown in Fig.
We count a total of 11 million transactions around all DWMs, that goes down to 9.9 million when multiple counting is avoided. Similarly, the simple sum of the single trading volumes surrounding all DWMs amounts to $33 billion, while the overall trading volume in all unique U2U pairs is $30 billion. Among the 40 large DWMs under consideration, 17 participate in at least one transaction in either 2020 or 2021, while the remaining 23 closed before 2020. Notably, our dataset includes Silk Road (the first modern DWM)1, Alphabay (once the leading DWM)44, and Hydra (currently the largest DWM in Russia)12. Other general statistics about our dataset can be found in the Section S3.
Regional websites
According to Dark.fail, recently, the darknet marketplace’s head moderator “Se7en” sharply criticized the phishers, LE cooperators, and doxxers of the community, and this event could be a consequence of that. Abacus Market operated as a central deposit wallet, multisignature darknet marketplace supporting both Bitcoin and Monero cryptocurrencies. Abacus Market, the largest Bitcoin-enabled Western darknet marketplace, has likely executed an exit scam after going offline in early July 2025, according to blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs. Even though DuckDuckGo is the Tor browser’s default search engine, it doesn’t index dark web websites, which means you won’t be able to find .onion sites with it. Riseup is a volunteer-run collective that offers secure chat and email services primarily used by progressive activists and social justice communities. It’s maintained by an independent organization committed to digital privacy and security.
Secure Your Cryptocurrency Transactions
On average, marketplaces had 109 unique vendor aliases and 3,222 product listings related to stolen data products. Marketplaces recorded 632,207 sales across these markets, which generated $140,337,999 in total revenue. On average, marketplaces had 26,342 sales and generated $5,847,417 in revenue.
Dark web websites: 10 Onion sites to explore
This shift has not only enhanced the overall user experience but also attracted a broader audience to darknet marketplaces. Features such as advanced search filters, customer reviews, and escrow systems have become standard, ensuring transparency and trust between buyers and sellers. While the darknet market ecosystem showed signs of recovery in 2023, it has yet to return to the revenues it experienced before the Hydra Marketplace closure in 2022, given the financial success of that operation. It’s noteworthy that, despite some unusual marketing efforts, no other darknet market has since assumed Hydra’s mantle of being the one-stop-shop for illicit products and services. Though the sanctioning and closure of fraud shop Genesis Market occurred last year, there were no other sanction events for the darknet market ecosystem, or major market takedowns. We’ll continue monitoring darknet market trends in 2024, and are curious to see what new tactics markets and fraud shops may employ to find more customers.
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With law enforcement agencies improving their ability to track Bitcoin (BTC) transactions, darknet market operators and vendors are moving to Monero (XMR) as their cryptocurrency of choice. We showed that a small fraction of traders is responsible for a large fraction of the trading volume, and by analysing the networks of buyers and sellers, we found different resilience regimes. Shocks tend to induce serious structural changes in the multiseller network, but impact the multibuyer network much less severely.
Trade‑offs & Ongoing Risks
- However, it soon became a double-edged sword as malicious actors began to exploit its capabilities for illicit purposes.
- The first operation took place in 2018 and successfully led to the arrest of 35 sellers41, while the largest operation to date occurred in 2020 and led to 179 arrests in six different countries42.
- Clearnet “directory” pages and market overviews frequently characterize Ares as using a walletless / direct‑pay approach with escrow, plus support for BTC and XMR (sometimes listing additional coins).
- Using his credentials, cybercriminals committed a variety of online fraud activity over the course of six months.
- Nevertheless, it is important to stress that the results are robust under considerable variation of the parameters, indicating that the coherent picture emerging from our analysis does not depend on the details of the method.
In many places, including the U.S., the UK, and the EU, accessing the dark web is legal for legitimate purposes. However, many sites on the dark web host illegal content or activities, and engaging with those can lead to serious legal consequences. In some countries, like Russia or China, dark web access itself may be darknet markets blocked or penalized. ProPublica is one of the safer Tor sites to visit, because it doesn’t link to illegal content or activities. Instead, it focuses on publishing stories and holding powerful institutions accountable. Other major news sources blocked in some countries, like the BBC, also have dark web versions.
Darknet marketplaces are commercial websites accessed by an encrypted browser which operate on the dark web, functioning primarily as black markets for illegal activity or substances. The fact they were being advertised so publicly in Moscow was slightly bizarre. This shift will likely drive forum operators to introduce features like automated escrow services and enhanced anonymity to attract users. The dark web hosts a wide range of sites — from whistleblower tools and secure email platforms to underground forums, black markets, and dark web mirrors of legitimate news outlets. We pulled six months of uptime data from open monitoring relays, read 2 400+ recent user comments on three invite-only forums, and tested each site with a clean Tor setup to check speed, PGP workflow and dispute flow. Longevity, code reuse and past exit-scam history are factored in, but we weigh present behaviour more heavily.
However, if a hacker gains access to the unsecured network you are on, they can easily view your account details and steal or modify your information. As a consequence of this, likely fewer crypto trading accounts and wallets were available for hackers to target. Cryptocurrency accounts were the only category that we saw to have experienced an increase. This is likely due to the fact that cryptocurrency prices have been largely stagnating in H and H1 2023, which resulted in less interest shown by the mainstream population.
To answer this question, we consider the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the evolution of stable U2U pairs. Previous studies reported that COVID-19 had a strong impact on DWMs due to delays and damage to the shipping infrastructure caused by border closures37,38. We start by investigating the number of new stable U2U pairs and their trading volume during the COVID-19 period. Users in stable pairs meeting both inside and outside DWMs have been growing over the last two years, since the shutdown of AlphaBay9, the largest DWM at the time. In 2020, a total of 6778 pairs of users in stable pairs met inside a DWM, corresponding to 192% of the 2019 level and to 255% of the 2018 level, see Fig. Pairs of users in stable pairs meeting inside a DWM traded for a total of $145 million in 2020, which corresponds to 252% of the 2019 level, and to 593% of the 2018 level, see Fig.
