I've been a lurker for a long time and poster for a couple months
what's the history of the deep web?
when did it start? how did it start?
I know the whole DPR story and all that but was that the start of the deep web?
who's idea was it? what was it originally designed for?
The timeline looks something like this:
2006: The Farmer's Market, was established, using Western Union and PayPal
2010: The Farmer's Market moved from the www to a hidden service
2011: Silk Road, the first marketplace to use both Tor and BTC escrow and vendor feedback systems, which set the standard for all DNMs going forward
2011: Gawker published an article about Silk Road, which ultimately gave it exposure to the masses. This is also when Senator Chuck Schumer started pressing the DEA and the DOJ to shut it down. The witch hunt begins
2011: 2011 was the year other DNMs started popping up everywhere and really started to gain popularity
2012: The Farmer's Market was taken down by DEA Operation Adam Bomb
2013: Sheep Marketplace was launched in March of 2013. They gained traction after Silk Road was dethroned. Someone absconded with $6 million from the market, eventually leading to it's closure
2013: Atlantis, the first DNM to accept Bitcoin and Litecoin, shutdown one month before (September 2013) Silk Road was raided. Atlantis gave users just one week to to withdraw any coin they had in their wallets
2013: Silk Road is brought down by the feds in October 2013
2013: Silk Road 2.0 was born just one month after the original Silk Road was brought down by the Feds.
2013: Black Market Reloaded aka BMR, took the site offline and to this day is one of the few DNMs that gracefully pulled out of the market, giving users and vendors time to pull coin from wallet and
2014: Agora was launched
2013: Sheep Marketplace closed in December 2013
2014: Evolution was born in January and was one of the fastest growing and largest DNMs
2014: DNMs come and go regularly at this point, hacked or exit scam. Someone else can fill in the blanks here
2014: November 2014 is when the Feds Operation Onymous took down Silk Road 2.0 and approximately "400+" other hidden services. That number is really 20+ after all is said and done, of which 10+ were drug markets
2015: Evolution exit scams in March with approximately $12 mill. Belize anyone...
2015: Agora joins BMR as one of the few DNMs to gracefully bow out, allowing users and vendors to withdraw coin from account
There is plenty of other content to be added to this timeline...but these are the main points in DNM history.