Consequently, many vendors are migrating to alternative platforms, including Signal, Session, and WhatsApp. This exodus is expected to continue as Telegram enforces stricter measures to curtail criminal activities on its network and provide new opportunities for interdiction. As large platforms face disruption from law enforcement action, dark web infighting, and an influx of users from Telegram, there’s a growing shift toward smaller, more specialized marketplaces.
The Continuing Battle For Darknet Market Dominance
Listings included offerings of prescription medication that was falsely advertised as being authentic. For example, in November 2023, while operating in an undercover capacity on Incognito Market, a law enforcement agent purchased and received several tablets purported to be oxycodone. Testing revealed that these tablets were not oxycodone and were, in fact, fentanyl pills.
What may look like disruption from the outside is, in practice, a recovery playbook now hardwired into the design of online drug markets. Archetyp may be gone, but the features that drove its success are already being carried forward by others. Archetyp was more than just the next online drug market to fall, having absorbed much of the vendor traffic displaced by earlier market closures. Following the collapse of illegal dark web marketplace Monopoly Market in late 2023, which was widely suspected to have been the result of law enforcement action, the European dark web community entered a brief period of disarray. Vendors migrated to unstable alternatives such as Incognito and Bohemia, but none of these managed to consolidate trust or operational continuity. When Archetyp, one of the largest and oldest dark web drug markets, was dismantled in June 2025, the authorities framed it as a ‘severe blow’ to European organized crime.
When you get on social media, chances are you just turn on your phone or your computer and you’re already logged into the site, just like where you were before. But being a dark web vendor, you don’t want to do that with darknet marketplaces. This is because suppose you get caught by the cops and they take your computer and open it and they can just see that you’re logged in as a vendor on the site. To further obscure the transaction history of cryptocurrencies, vendors may employ tumbling services or mixers.
SALES AND TURNOVER HAVE BOTH INCREASED
In recent years, some darknet markets and fraud shops have been integrating crypto payment processors on their websites via APIs, possibly as a way to improve operational efficiency and increase security. Essentially, these payment processors provide a white label service for darknet markets and fraud shops, and a seamless checkout experience for those services’ customers. UAPS, shown in the chart above, is one such example of a payment processor that many fraud shops, including the OFAC-designated Genesis Market, used in 2023.
History Of Dark Web Marketplaces
These barriers are designed to ensure that only trustworthy and reliable vendors are permitted to operate. Other dark web vendors are simply low-level fraudsters and opportunists, selling things like phone-verified Paypal and Cash App accounts or sharing their Netflix login information for a one-time fee. Some dark web vendors are genuine programming or cybersecurity experts who make a fortune selling packaged malware and exploits that enable less sophisticated operators to launch powerful cyber attacks against enterprise targets. Dark web vendors play a vital role in the illicit digital economy, supplying hackers, spammers, and fraudsters with the information, tools, and resources they need (at a price, of course) to defraud their victims or launch damaging cyber attacks.
This was a fascinating real-world experiment revealing what happens to a drug darknet marketplace that’s allowed to flourish. HSI is a directorate of ICE and the principal investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), responsible for investigating transnational crime and threats, specifically those criminal organizations that exploit the global infrastructure through which international trade, travel, and finance move. Monitoring the dark web can help enterprise security teams anticipate and counteract upcoming cyber attacks, or detect evidence of prior attacks and take action to minimize the damage and prevent further distribution of stolen data.
Bohemia Market
Our analysis also focused on the price of illicit drugs that are sold on the darknet. Here we found large disparities between the prices of illicit drugs sold by foreign-based cryptomarket vendors and those located in Australia. For example, average prices for ecstasy sold by Australian vendors were more than six times the price of those sold by their foreign counterparts. Methamphetamine and cocaine were approximately three times more expensive when purchased from an Australian cryptomarket vendor. Only cannabis was priced similarly, with prices from Australian and foreign vendors largely comparable.
- They can then present this case to a federal judge and request a warrant to open it.
- Pairing the variables allows the vendors to combine them and establish probable cause.
- The vendors make sure they don’t go to that same post office for six months because they think if the authorities find out they sent a package from there, they might set up surveillance.
- Over the course of the conspiracy, Sabbagh and his co-conspirators trafficked counterfeit alprazolam valued at more than $25 million.
- He recommends verifying market employees carefully, and to weed out law enforcement infiltration through barium meal tests.
- According to a statement by WayWay founders responsible for launch of Kraken – the marketplace aims to become the best in category and providing “the most secure decentralized platform” in Dark Web.
As outlined in the report, geopolitics and drug trafficking have become inextricably linked, that’s why the volume of shadow economy in the Dark Web will remain to grow and accelerated by ongoing tensions. The law enforcement community needs to develop new ways to monitor illegal drug trades in the Dark Web and adjust their tactics to the dynamically changing threat landscape. A Darknet Market is an online marketplace that operates on the dark web, a hidden part of the internet. These markets allow users to buy and sell various goods, including illicit items like drugs, counterfeit goods, and stolen data.
Access To A Global Market: Expanding Reach And Customer Base
It is not clear if this group may be state-supported or solely driven by their ideological motivation, or perhaps artificially created by foreign governments considering ongoing geopolitical tensions. It is worth mentioning, another actor with the alias Wazawaka was presumably responsible for a similar attack against the now closed Hydra marketplace back in 2018. Others, particularly those based in Russia, focus solely on info stealer hacking tools and brokering stolen data. Exit scams involve vendors gaining the trust of customers over time by delivering products as promised.
DESPITE TRADE ROUTES BEING HIT, CUSTOMERS ARE STILL RECEIVING THEIR ORDERS
As for drugs, the ‘foreigness’ of the forum is further evident from the types of drugs promoted, as well as those that are more difficult, if not impossible, to find there (A-PVP and Mephedrone). For example, Vendor ‘SunshineShop’ recently advertised LSD at different price points and amounts. These users have authored nearly 242,000 posts which are dispersed across 11,303 topics.
- Dive into the dark pool trading world with Abacus, Alphabay, Torrez, and more.
- Over 2020, technical innovation and new commercial partnerships between competitors have meant many darknet markets are emerging from the virus stronger than ever.
- This is one of the oldest and most well-established single vendor markets on this list.
- These findings indicate that the prices of Australian darknet drugs are much more closely correlated to local street prices than they are to those sold by foreign vendors.
- HSI New York leads and directs all operational and administrative activities of the El Dorado Task Force (EDTF).
Despite the many challenges faced by darknet marketplaces over the course of 2024, these platforms have nevertheless seen a slight increase of income compared to 2023, generating more than USD 1.7 billion. WeTheNorth is a Canadian market established in 2021 that also serves international users. It offers counterfeit documents, financial fraud tools, hacking and malware services. It has an active forum and community along with an extensive user vetting process. It is a hub for financial cybercrime and offers a wide range of illicit services and stolen data that cater to sophisticated cybercriminals.
Based on our observations from analysis on dark web data using Lunar, we’ve identified the top 7 marketplaces on the dark web in 2025. We developed Lunar to monitor the deep and dark web, including dark web marketplace sites. Platform shutdowns can disrupt logistics, lead to arrests and seize goods, but they do not break apart the dark web’s recovery architecture. And so, the cycle continues – one closure followed by the next platform launch. Just as Archetyp filled the void left by the dismantling of other online drug markets that existed before it, its successor may already be taking shape.
Silk Road was shut down in 2013 by the FBI and its creator, Ross Ulbricht, got two life sentences. Almost immediately, former administrators of Silk Road built Silk Road 2.0. In 2014, in the second year of operation, that was also shut down by law enforcement. Successor after successor has since popped up, with drug-related darknet marketplaces surviving an average of 232 days before their shutdown and inevitable reincarnation. A key member of JCODE, HSI performs an essential role in detecting, investigating, and preventing the sale and distribution of opioids through the internet.
