However, in June 2025, BidenCash’s relevant domains (around 145) were seized by the US Department of Justice. Next up is Abacus, another newer market that has already made a massive name for itself, especially following AlphaBay’s closure. It contains 40,000+ listings for illegal products (mostly) and is worth an estimated $15 million, so it’s one of the largest markets out there.
When companies are hacked and their data is stolen, that data often appears for sale on the so-called darknet. Other users are skeptical of the shift, especially those that firsthand experienced multiple concerted v3 onion service outages in January. Cybercriminals go on dark web marketplaces to buy and sell illicit goods and services. They engage in financial crime and sell other people’s stolen personal information, since they’re under the veil of anonymity. Despite most darknet markets banning the sale of fentanyl in their terms of service, nearly all mainstream Western-facing markets have vendors that sell fentanyl-laced products. While it received a relatively small share of large retail purchases as shown in the previous chart, Abacus Market is one such example.
See Why DarkOwl Is The Leader In Darknet Data
In 2022, it ranked as the fourth largest Bitcoin-supporting Western DNM with 10% of market share, rising to 17% in 2023. In 2024, its share surged to over 70%, following ASAP Market’s voluntary closure in July, 2023 and the law enforcement seizure of Incognito Market in March, 2024. The v3 address utilizes SHA3/ed25519/curve25519 cryptography which is considerably more secure than v2’s SHA1/DH/RSA1024 address encryption. The v2 addresses have been the standard for 15 years and the network overdue for a more secure mechanism to become standard. Maintaining persistent access and knowledge of this darknet landscape is critical to provide continuous coverage of data from the dark web. While some suspect that it was a large-scale Exit Scam operation, others have hinted that it could be the by-product of an international law enforcement operation.
Darknet Market Url
Some use them due to privacy concerns, such as journalists talking to informants or whistleblowers, while others may simply want to protect their confidential information from observation or tracking. Nevertheless, most people on the internet do not need to communicate or venture into the dark web. Imagine an underground version of your favorite online marketplace, somewhere hidden, exclusive, and often operating outside legal boundaries.
Ironclad Darknet Market
In the chart below, we see that the DNM Aggregator emerged as the clear leader among fraud shops enabling cybercrime, and Exploit.in and Kraken Market almost equally sold tools used to facilitate ransomware attacks. Kraken Market also received the largest share of stolen funds. As for cybercriminal administration, the category includes inflows from ransomware affiliate wallets. This includes purchases such as malicious software and supporting services which cybercriminals sometimes make using escrow services on crime forums.
Asap Market Asap Link Asap Darknet
Kraken Market also captured the largest share of transfers potentially sent for the purpose of obfuscating funds, as well as buying illegal products. In addition to that activity, markets like these host vendors that advertise their own cashout or swapping services, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in laundered funds. Western drug flows in particular come from US-domiciled exchanges and trace flows from those to darknet markets. The entity “DNM Aggregator” that appears within each category refers to a service we’ve identified as being in control of multiple, disparate darknet markets.
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Sustained law enforcement pressure has stymied marketplaces’ development, curtailed innovation and increasingly driven users toward independent vendor shops and encrypted communication platforms like Telegram. Asap market is recognized as the sole marketplace that includes authorized and in-built DeadDrops, which are offered in more than 23 languages. With an integrated map, users can mark drop zones and monitor surveillance camera reports.
Darknet Drugs
The site gives out free samples of the stolen data every now and then to gain more customers. It also uses a strict authentication process to deter scammers. With its fast rise to fame and focus on money fraud, it’s no surprise that cybersecurity experts are keeping a very close eye on this one. One of the things STYX is infamous for is having a rigorous verification process for users that makes it seem more exclusive. They even have a Telegram channel to provide their clients with live updates. Like most of the markets, STYX supports Bitcoin (BTC), Monero (XMR), and other crypto tokens to keep everyone’s identity hidden on this marketplace.
What Do People Sell Or Exchange On Darknet Markets?
The markets often share materials related to child exploitation, pornography, and non-consensual recordings, all of which are serious crimes that inflict lasting harm on real-life victims. Such content fuels a dangerous cycle of abuse, violence, and exploitation. Want to get illegal drugs, fake passports, Trojan, or other cyber attack software? Understandably, as in the case with most illicit trade markets, you don’t even need to verify your email Awazon.
Advertisement for a full dose of the Moderna vaccine at $500, paid in bitcoin Scammers or the real deal? You can participate in battles or tournaments and receive fantastic prizes if you finish in the top positions. Such as the last time a product was ordered, the total sales, efficiency in different areas ( speed, quality, packaging) ratings etc. Rinkeby employs a Proof-of-Authority (PoA) consensus mechanism that allows only a small number of nodes to mine blocks on the network as opposed to Ethereum 1. She writes the Psychology Today blog Breathe, Mama, Breathe and her own blog at shondamoralis. In terms of community functions, in the marketplace, we havecompletely scrapped the formula for calculating user Trust Level (TL).
- A recent technical blog on v3 onion services suggests many of the v3 services are “barely used” – or setup to merely act as slave services for a malicious botnet.
- This string is automatically generated when the onion service is originally configured using a public key.
- Sometimes, people visit the dark web to move dirty money.
- Now that v2 onion services are no longer supported by the Tor Project, DarkOwl estimates a decrease of 62% of known onion services across the Tor network.
ASAP Market is a large dark web marketplace with excellent security and performance. It was first known as the Asean market before being renamed the ASAP market. It is a general-purpose darknet market with a major concentration on drugs of all kinds. DarkOwl determined during this quick analysis that darknet markets are experiencing instability with many markets either under heavy DDoS and possibly on the verge of exit scam.
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It’s safer with certain products to buy from a domestic supplier. The ASAP Market, much like other darknet marketplaces, is notorious for frequently changing its onion address URL. This tactic is primarily employed to defend against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and to obscure their operations from law enforcement agencies. Despite Telegram’s anonymity, the dark web is still a hot spot for illegal trading of malware, illicit goods, and stolen data (such as stolen credit card information). Even with the increase in law enforcement pressure, the dark web market still achieved a revenue of $2 billion in 2024. Therefore, as long as this dark part of the internet exists, these marketplaces will flourish and emerge.
Two days ago, the market administrator, Lovelace posted a message directed at Dark0de claiming the competitor market team were using a circuit tool attack (DDoS) against World Market’s main mirror and ASAP Market. The comments included a lengthy post by DeSnake, the administrator of the recently revitalized AlphaBay Market. Around the same time Cannazon also suffered from DDoS attack and then posted they were “retiring” and not pulling an exit scam. Very few marketplace administrators publicly “retire” and gracefully shutdown their operations like White House Market (WHM) did back in October 2021.
