Some people really are better off using drugs (especially if their use helps them cope with serious trauma—and it often does). Without dope, I’m too hopelessly depressed to work, study or even eat regularly. “I hate to imagine where I’d be without it,” said Marie of her use during a traumatic period of her life. While the purity of coke and heroin that she bought varied somewhat, it was much easier to avoid fentanyl.
Over its lifetime, Hydra grew into the world’s largest online drug marketplace with an annual revenue of approximately $1.7 billion, which at the time was nearly 10 times larger than the second-biggest international marketplace in the world, Dream Market. By our reckoning, 69% of the Russian population (about 100 million people) lived in cities, towns and parts of the countryside where Hydra-affiliated vendors operated locally. Tor’s clever traffic encryption system makes it very difficult for the police to know where these sites — and the people who use them — are located. It’s a natural place for an uncensored drugs marketplace, as it is for whistleblower websites and political dissidents, which also use the same techniques to keep their visitors hidden. After all, you can’t exactly use Paypal or your credit card to pay for illegal drugs. Cory explained that Bitcoin’s anonymous nature is both its greatest virtue and worst flaw.
Darknet Market
One of the bigger changes the internet has introduced to the global marketplace is the ability to find, purchase and receive goods without ever leaving the comfort of home. Launched in 2023, STYX focuses on financial crime, providing stolen credit card data, hacked bank accounts and access to various cryptocurrency laundering tools. The story of dark web marketplaces kicks off with Silk Road, launched in 2011. It was the first big site where people could anonymously buy drugs using Bitcoin, and it gained a lot of attention, until it was shut down by the FBI in 2013.
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This ability of dark web communities to thrive in disruptions reflects how dark web market users have become experts at adapting to risks, managing disruptions and rebuilding quickly. Law enforcement shutdowns are also only one type of disruption that dark web communities face. Dark web market users routinely face voluntary closures (the gradual retirement of a market), exit scams (sudden closures of markets where any money in escrow is taken), or even scheduled maintenance of these markets. N 2025, dark web websites frequently change domains and are often short-lived.
Exodus Marketplace
This is the first study to measure and characterize opioid trading in anonymous online marketplaces and forums. From our measurement, we concluded that anonymous online marketplaces and forums provided easy-access platforms for global opioid supply. Our study identified 41,000 opioid trade–related marketplace listings and forum posts by analyzing more than 1 million listings and posts in multiple anonymous marketplaces and forums, which is the largest underground opioid trading data set ever reported. We found evidence through extensive analyses of the anonymous online market of pervasive supply, which fuels the international opioid epidemic. Nontraditional methods, as presented here by studying the online supply chain, present a novel approach for governmental and other large-scale solutions.
A Persistent Trade
- Yes, purchasing illegal substances on the darknet is against the law in most countries and can lead to serious legal repercussions.
- Ethically, they must minimize harm, responsibly handle any stolen or sensitive data (often notifying victims or law enforcement), avoid entrapment, and maintain research integrity.
- By offering so many options, these sites also just make it easier for psychonauts to explore what’s out there.
- Despite the efforts of law enforcement, the dark web continues to thrive.
The market facilitates trades in stolen credit card data, hacked bank accounts, and services to facilitate the laundering of cryptocurrency. New and potentially more vulnerable population segments can be reached by exploitative drug dealers as they begin to sell on social platforms and the number of drug consumers in the US and around the world grows. The menus provided by dealers through messaging apps and on social media are often lengthy and diverse, featuring prized varieties advertised for their purity and sold at significantly lower costs than equivalents available on the streets of London and New York.
Most of the arrests were made in the U.S., which is in the grips of an overdose crisis. Synthetic opioids, mostly fentanyl, kill more Americans every year than died in the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined. The FBI is considered the primary agency responsible for policing the dark web.
Treasury Payments
Businesses may use these services to sabotage their competitors, while individuals may seek revenge or simply want access to private information about someone. It’s also a marketplace for digital mercenaries; you’ll find everything from solo hackers offering their skills to well-organized groups that take on more complex or high-stakes projects. Some even have connections to criminal organizations and, in more serious cases, government-backed operations. It brings in vendor reviews from other places and verifies them using PGP signatures, so buyers can feel a bit more confident about who they’re dealing with. There’s also a premium account option for users who want extra benefits.
Since 2020, 2easy has sold massive stealer logs with sensitive data like passwords, bank cards, and initial access credentials. It supports operations in multiple languages and operates on both clearnet and Tor. If you have a large market and you want to sell or buy even more drugs, then you can start working with us. To start working with us, you need to fill out a form from the list, after which our managers will contact you and offer a solution and then you can safely buy drugs, buy medicines. To wrap their heads around these contradictory results, the authors developed substance-specific explanations for how “the dynamics of the cryptomarket” might influence drug composition. For example, the ample in-person supply of MDMA in the Netherlands may drive the differences observed between cryptomarket and offline sources.
“Those exposed to drug ads were 17 times more likely to purchase drugs on social media compared to those who had not seen such ads,” she adds. Some dealers these days are even brazen enough to boost their posts and pay for sponsored advertising. “Mushrooms and marijuana used to be hard to get and now they’re being marketed to me in beautiful packaging on Instagram,” says one 34-year-old in Austin, Texas, whom WIRED spoke to. According to the indictment, Parsarad, 36, of Tehran, launched Nemesis Market on the dark web in March 2021. Between 2021 and 2024, Nemesis Market processed more than 400,000 orders. Of these, more than 55,000 orders were categorized as orders for stimulants, including methamphetamine, cocaine, cocaine base (crack cocaine), and other controlled substances.
Abacus Market
Archetyp is a market that sells only drugs, and is still active today. DNMs have a limited life and may be shutdown suddenly, leaving users with unfulfilled orders and sellers with no means of communication. The dark web or darknet is a computer network that uses encryption and randomized relay systems to mask a user’s identity, IP address, and browsing history. Compared to its predecessors, Archetyp enforced enhanced security expectations from its users. These included an advanced encryption program known as “Pretty Good Privacy” and a cryptocurrency called Monero.
- Five or six times a day, a man from Texas injects a dose of carefully measured fentanyl.
- Usually these products are sent to the buyer by post and money transferred to the seller through the escrow system.
- There are many different marketplaces on the darknet, and each one has its own selection of drugs.
- Websites on the surface web are publicly accessible and indexed by search engines such as Google and Bing, permitting internet users to search for them.
- All of this has made it one of the most reliable markets still active in 2025.
It was touted as a major policing win and was accompanied by a slick cyberpunk-themed video. By supplying stolen data, these dark web links fuel many online scams and identity theft operations, playing a critical role in the darker aspects of the internet. In 2019, there were approximately 8,400 active sites on the dark web, selling thousands of products and services daily. Valued at approximately $15 million, Abacus Market is one of the most lucrative platforms in the dark web ecosystem.
Torzon Market
Nemesis Market operated on the dark web, a network that uses The Onion Router (TOR) to encrypt traffic and hide users’ Internet Protocol (IP) address. At its peak, Nemesis Market had over 150,000 users and more than 1,100 vendor accounts registered worldwide. Between 2021 and 2024, Nemesis Market processed more than 400,000 orders, including more than 60,000 orders in 2022 and more than 250,000 orders in 2023. Of these, more than 55,000 orders were categorized as stimulants, which included sub-categories for methamphetamine, cocaine, cocaine base (crack), and other controlled substances. More than 17,000 orders were categorized as opioids, which included sub-categories for fentanyl, heroin, and oxycodone.
Fraud And Hacking Services
You can use dark web monitoring tools, such as NordVPN’s Dark Web Monitor, to check if your data has been leaked. These tools scan dark web forums and marketplaces for any signs of your compromised credentials. There is no need to visit darknet marketplaces yourself to know whether your data was leaked. Monero and Bitcoin are two of the most commonly used digital currencies on the dark web markets. Due to being the most popular and the oldest coin, Bitcoin is traceable.
The report recommends that all international packages start to include what they call “advanced electronic data”—special information on bar codes that could help flag drug-bearing packages for postal workers. Learn how darknet markets function and the challenges they present to cybersecurity, shedding light on the hidden side of the internet. Indeed, Hydra was so popular that vendors had illegal ads painted on the streets of cities, advertising drugs or jobs. In terms of drugs sold, 75% of them ranked by popularity were mephedrone, cannabis, amphetamines and alpha-PVP.
