In accordance with sector reports1,4,8,9,10, we measure the dominance in terms of revenue in USD, i.e., the dominant market is the market with the largest revenue, as shown in Fig. To study the distribution of the trading volume between users, we analyse the total money received and sent by each user. The number of actors in the ecosystem is affected by several factors, especially market closures. As a consequence, our method returns generally fewer sellers than other estimates25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33. It is worth noting that parameters were set conservatively in order to avoid false positives in the classification of sellers.
Dark Web Marketplaces In 2025
It uses PGP encryption, two-factor authentication, and OPTP authentication to ensure users’ security. The ASAP is a moderate design marketplace on the dark web that offers helpful tools like mandatory PGP encryption and two-factor authentication for a safe browsing experience. In 2017, the website went offline following a law enforcement action taken by the American, Canadian, and Thai authorities, but since August 2021, it’s been operational again. DarkOde Reborn is a great darknet market where you can find anything you want. Bohemia is a modern dark web marketplace with a great user interface that is easy to use and navigate.
Agentic AI-Powered, Intelligence-Driven Unified Cybersecurity Platform
The result is a time series of lists of sellers and buyers for each period and for each market and the U2U network. Previous studies have shown that, although the number of users and transactions is larger in markets, the trading volume in the U2U network is larger than that of markets13. To include the major marketplaces and obtain statistically relevant measures, we selected markets with an average daily trading volume larger than 15,000 USD and a lifetime larger than six months. To track the transactions of markets and users as entities, the data need to be pre-processed in order to map groups of addresses into entities. For instance, market-only sellers are entities classified as sellers only in markets, but that may promote U2U transactions with other sellers, hence being part of the S2S network. Edges are multihomers, i.e., traders that are simultaneously active in both markets (sellers in the multiseller network, and buyers in the multibuyer network).
How Drug Buyers And Illicit Users Migrated From Hydra To Other Darknet Markets
- Same time, RuTOR may be definitely named one of the longest living underground communities surviving challenging times for other Dark Web actors without significant issues.
- TRM experts examined hundreds of advertisements from the Chinese precursor manufacturers evaluated in our study, and found that the top five markets targeted were Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, Germany, and the US.
- Blockchain intelligence confirmed that Murarka was not only facilitating cash-for-crypto swaps but was also mixing funds from different criminal sources—drug proceeds, hacking, and theft—into a single laundering pipeline.
- According to them, their marketplace is completely safe and they spent significant financial means to maintain the infrastructure, but competitors and other malicious parties attempted to abuse their reputation.
- To study the distribution of the trading volume between users, we analyse the total money received and sent by each user.
- Vortex is one of those markets that aims to stand out by being user-friendly, secure, and anonymous.
TRM Labs is the only blockchain intelligence provider with a specialist category unique to individual drug vendors — and this year, we saw incoming volumes sent to illicit vendor shops more than double. 2024 also saw the establishment of the first Telegram-only Western darknet marketplace, Si Market, which now hosts more than 40 vendors specializing in the sale of psychedelics, cannabis, and cannabis-related products. Onymous (the law enforcement takedown of the Silk Road 2.0 darknet marketplace together with a host of smaller DNMs in 2014) and Op.
- While some of these markets were shuttered by law enforcement agencies – some took the easy way out with exit scams.
- To further attract buyers of drugs from other underground communities, the actors behind the Mega frequently organize “Black Friday” discounts to stimulate the sellers, by doing so offering lower commission rates from their sales.
- Sixth, we consider the cumulative mean interevent time for each entity i at time t, defined as the mean of the sequence of time interval between consecutive transactions of an entity until time t, which we denote by \(\phi _i(t)\).
- Anon Market, a new underground dark web marketplace popped up after the closure of Hydra.
- To observe the behavior of the ecosystem on specific calendar periods, such as weekly or quarterly, we select a time period and aggregate the daily time series through step 3 accordingly.
Essential Security Measures
Still, the data acquired from this operation will likely fuel years of follow-up actions and targeted arrests. The dark web is no longer an untouchable sanctuary, and even privacy-centric cryptocurrencies can’t fully shield operations from discovery. These operations also serve as a warning shot to other cybercriminal networks. However, law enforcement appears to have made breakthroughs in crypto-tracking, either through advanced analytics or infiltration of the platform itself. One key moderator and six top vendors — some responsible for thousands of drug shipments — were arrested in Germany and Sweden. With every transaction conducted in Monero — a cryptocurrency known for its privacy features — law enforcement had significant difficulty tracking financial flows.
Use Cryptocurrency For Transactions
These ancient whales can come from several backgrounds, like early crypto miners or unlaundered stolen assets. If there’s one constant in the crypto space and finance more broadly, it’s that money never sleeps. So-called “ancient” Bitcoin whales pop up in the space periodically, but an extant darknet vendor is still quite rare.
Darknet market role specialization provides one possible explanation as to why the ecosystem has yet to see a dominant player. We can see this pattern on the chart below, which shows the level of market share controlled by the dominant market of each epoch. The bus blocked two traffic lanes on a road near Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs before security forces removed it an hour later.
One of the most common is the exit scam, where a marketplace suddenly disappears and takes everyone’s money with it. But once you start doing illegal things, like buying drugs or stolen credit cards, that’s when you’re breaking the law. Others are looking for stolen data, hacking services, or even banned books and political content. Some are looking for illegal stuff they can’t buy elsewhere, like drugs or counterfeit documents. Some were taken down by law enforcement, others just vanished overnight with users’ money.
This operation follows Binance’s prior assistance in the takedown of Kidflix, a child exploitation platform, indicating a pattern of cooperation with law enforcement agencies. Lin has since pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court to narcotics conspiracy, money laundering, and distributing misbranded drugs. Binance’s FIU provided critical intelligence, traced illicit crypto flows, and froze over $3.5 million in assets linked to the platform. The platform’s use of advanced privacy tools and its own crypto-based “banking” system aimed to obscure transactions. Insights, news and analysis of the crypto market straight to your inbox Although the Department announced that it would investigate fewer crypto firms, it’s still prepared to conduct these operations.
Incognito Market
Chainalysis had previously identified over $37.8 million in suspicious transfers involving suspected China-based chemical vendors. The availability of inexpensive drug precursor chemicals—primarily sourced from China—has further fueled the growth of these platforms. In Grand Theft Auto Online, players who purchase warehouses and garages for illicit cargo and stolen cars can buy/steal and sell them through trade on the “SecuroServ” syndicate website. A study based on a combination of listing scrapes and feedback to estimate sales volume by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University captured some of the best data. It estimated a quarter of all purchases were for resale and that the trend towards decentralization meant they are unlikely to be eliminated any time soon.
The operational capacity of darknet markets in 2025 demonstrates significant advancement in cryptographic transaction security and platform stability. Since the infamous dark web drug marketplace Silk Road came on the scene, practically all these illicit transactions are now handled with crypto. According to analysts at blockchain forensic firm TRM Labs, darknet marketplaces saw a modest revenue increase in 2024, surpassing $1.7 billion, with Russian-language platforms continuing to dominate the crypto drug trade. Even after the takedown of Hydra Market in April 2022, no other major Russian-language darknet markets have been dismantled, allowing them to continue driving illicit crypto drug activity. A new report published by blockchain forensic firm TRM Labs in early 2025 outlined a major rise in crypto-fueled drug sales throughout 2024, driven largely by Russian-language darknet marketplaces.
The ensuing war for darknet market dominance that began in 2022 continued into 2023, but no other market has since matched Hydra’s financial success. It also uses global law enforcement networks, like Europol, to combat cybercrime threats. “The FDA is committed to continuing its work to disrupt and dismantle the illegal sales of drugs on the dark web, where such sales far too often have tragic consequences,” said Chad Menster, Deputy Director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations (FDA OCI).
US Treasury And DOJ Take Action Against Chinese Fentanyl Trafficking Network
Historically, Telegram has been a favored platform for selling drugs — due to its security and public perception of non-cooperation with law enforcement, as well as strict access controls for groups and channels. This dramatic increase may reflect the decentralization of the drug trade away from traditional darknet markets, as vendors grow more adept at operating across multiple platforms on both the clearnet and darknet — including e-commerce websites and social media platforms. Amongst the most notable was the first merger and acquisition between two marketplaces on the darknet — whereby the struggling SuperMarket was absorbed by the now-Superlisted DrugHub in an operation that lasted around one month.
Beyond Fentanyl: TRM Report Reveals Cryptocurrency’s Role In The International Drug Precursor Market
However, the possibility of a silent law enforcement operation hasn’t been entirely ruled out. According to blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs, the sudden disappearance aligns with common patterns seen in exit scams, where marketplace operators disappear with funds held in escrow. Most recently, Pedro Inzunza Noriega and his son, Pedro Inzunza Coronel, were indicted in California for fentanyl trafficking amid reports linking their Sinaloa Cartel faction to crypto-based laundering through Chinese brokers.
The first marketplace to use both Tor and Bitcoin escrow was Silk Road, founded by Ross Ulbricht under pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts” in February 2011. It has been considered a “proto-Silk Road” but the use of payment services such as PayPal and Western Union allowed law enforcement to trace payments and it was subsequently shut down by the FBI in 2012. From 2003, the “Research Chemical Mailing List” (RCML) would discuss sourcing “Research Chemicals” from legal and grey sources as an alternative to forums such as alt.drugs.psychedelics.
The empty point on the multiseller median income line demarcates the quarter with only two multisellers. (b) The number of buyers for each category and multibuyers per quarter. (a) The number of sellers for each category and multisellers per quarter. From the last quarter of 2013, U2U-only sellers become the largest category of sellers and remains as the largest throughout the rest of the observation period. Although Hydra is not a single dominant market as Silk Road was, its dominance is marked by a high market share, consistently staying above 80% in the last two years. To corroborate this switch of trend, first, we compute the Pearson correlation coefficient between the seller and buyer time series of the monthly median net income before and after each month.
Evolution of buyers and sellers in the ecosystem of DWMs. The classification method is robust with respect to the values assigned to the classification parameters, and returns reasonable estimates compared against a benchmark of nine markets (see Supplementary Information Section S1). Our method identifies sellers, whereas buyers are entities which are not classified as sellers. We implement a method of classification based on exchanged money, number of transactions, and time activity for each entity, as illustrated in Fig.
