In total, there were 2,158 vendors who advertised at least one of the 96,672 product listings across the 30 marketplaces. Vendors and product listings were not distributed equally across markets. 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. We found several thousand vendors selling tens of thousands of stolen data products on 30 darknet markets.
What Are Darknets & Dark Markets?
Using TAILS is yet another security measure that protects your online identity on the dark web. It is a specific Debian-based version of Linux software that leaves no traces of the user activity or the operating system on the computer. It uses the Tor network because it is a popular network that helps to circumvent censorship and online surveillance.
Security Measures For Darknet Markets
For example, it’s a good idea to change your passwords, contact your financial institutions, freeze credit, and set up two-factor authentication. Accessing the dark web is easy; you just need the Tor Browser, which connects you to the Tor network where .onion websites live. Your activities on the dark web are not entirely shielded from tracking, and relying solely on anonymity can lead to a false sense of security. The dark web draws not only serious cyber criminals but also law enforcement agents aiming to catch them. Pissmail is the service for you, offering an onion based web service accessible via Tor browser. Deutsche Welle (DW) is a German state funded news organization that reports on worldwide topics and events.
Torrez Market
Chances are you can find it at the Imperial Library, one of the most popular sites on the dark web. But online and at your finger tips, if you can make it past the surface web. One of the most straightforward ways to access to dark web safely is via Tor, so we’ve kept that in mind when compiling our list. Take control of your digital security with an exclusive demo of our powerful threat management platform. Radar Rundown Hiding your IP address is one of the best ways to protect your online activities from …
Exit Scams
You can legally browse darknet sites for legitimate purposes like research or privacy protection. However, engaging in illegal activities on the darknet is against the law and can result in serious criminal charges. If you access illegal content or participate in criminal transactions, you face legal consequences. The legality depends on your activities and your country’s specific laws regarding darknet use.
The Top 7 Dark Web Marketplaces In 2025
Both Agartha and Cartel earned enough revenue within the 35-week period we tracked them to be characterized as midsize companies, earning $91.6 million and $32.3 million, respectively. Other markets like Aurora, DeepMart, and WhiteHouse were also on track to reach the revenue of a midsize company if given a full year to earn. We offer a seamless, secure, and trusted experience tailored for the Canadian community.
Purchases through links on our pages may yield affiliate revenue for us. We review and list tools and products without bias, regardless of potential commissions. The first major darknet market pioneered BTC trading, processing $1.2 billion before its 2013 shutdown. A timeline of darknet marketplace evolution, from Silk Road to 2025’s top players.
- The expansion of cryptomarkets has also contributed to the growth of darknet drug trade.
- These platforms provide a decentralized marketplace where users can interact directly, bypassing intermediaries.
- Other than the Silk Road 2.0, similar marketplaces also emerged, but they all went down sooner or later.
- These markets have also adopted Tor-based infrastructure, which enhances user anonymity by routing traffic through multiple nodes.
- Latest updates from the darknet trading world as of February 2025—key shifts and developments.
Use Tor Browser from torproject.org for safe onion routing—update regularly. Alphabay rose to prominence with 400,000+ users and $600M yearly trades, ending in a 2017 bust. Due to law enforcement, many markets now require invites, referrals, or verified PGP identities.
Shuttered Dark Web Marketplaces
Kingdom Market is a newer darknet market that has been around since April 2021 but was only recently vetted for listing on Dread, the pre-eminent forum for markets on the dark web. It features a unique site design unlike any other market yet is still intuitive and easy to use. Conspicuously absent are some preferred features, such as the lack of pre-order (direct pay) purchases, a multi-sig option for BTC payments, and forced PGP encryption for communications. It makes up for this with enhanced security and user safety features, helping users to ensure they are not getting phished. It’s one of the largest darknet markets that launched in 2022 and trades sensitive financial credential transactions.
Dark Web Sites Name List: Where To Find Secure Marketplaces
The success of web markets is greatly facilitated by their well-designed and well-structured interface, since the persuasion of customers begins when they first visit the website. Alphabay Market leads with 60,000+ listings and $20 million in monthly trades via BTC and XMR, dominating 20% of darknet marketplaces. With 25,000+ users and 3,000+ vendors, it’s the gold standard for escrow security and scale. The diversity of offerings on darknet markets has expanded significantly, catering to a wide range of user preferences. From pharmaceuticals to recreational substances, these platforms provide detailed product listings, user reviews, and vendor ratings, ensuring transparency and reliability.
In the wake of Hydra market’s collapse in 2022, new markets quickly swooped in to try and replace it. Is an English and Russian language marketplace that seems to have captured many of Hydra’s former vendors and consumers. In the first arc of the anime series Lupin the 3rd Part V, Lupin III steals digital currency from the “Marco Polo” darknet market. In particular, pig butchering schemes involving cryptocurrency have been increasing. Department of Justice announced it had seized cryptocurrency worth an estimated $112 million linked to pig butchering.
Therefore, you can hire them to perform a task for you, from planting malware to hacking email accounts and even breaking into various social media accounts. The nature of the dark web (anonymity and privacy) opens opportunities for drug dealers to reach a wide customer base across the globe without getting caught. XMR hides transaction details, unlike BTC, which dropped 40% in use due to tracking risks since 2023. Pioneered dark pool trading with BTC, shut down in 2013 after $1.2B in trades. The top performers of 2025, ranked by trade volume and market influence.
Furthermore, only nine of the eleven markets seem to offer counterfeits, with Agora and Evolution offering the most, followed by BlackBank Market, Alphabay, and Middle Earth Marketplace. The remaining markets seem to harbor only a minimal number of counterfeits. Inspired by previous research (Wegberg et al., 2018), we used the annotated listings to train a multiclass classifier to predict the labels of the remaining unlabeled counterfeits.
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Torzon market made its debut in September 2022, and ever since, it has been on an upward trajectory. In fact, it now features more than 11,600 illegal items, which include hacking tools, hard drugs, and all types of cybercrime services. For instance, a factory employee can secretly slip away with one and sell it on the darknet markets. In this darkest corner of the internet, that gun becomes an illegal weapon.
Dark markets, as well as various other services within darknets, are hosted as ‘hidden services’. This means that the servers providing these services are only accessible via Tor and do not have a public IP address or domain name. Hidden services can operate while keeping the physical location of the server hidden, which makes tracking and shutting them down considerably more challenging. The Tor network provides strong anonymity, making tracking difficult, but it’s not perfect.
