Obviously the ongoing development of what appears to be by far the most secure market around, is leaving
the developers little time to actually promote their site.
Having lost a little money in the Sheep heist (though nowhere near as much as some people), I'm most interested in the market that provides the best security for vendors and customers. And from what I can see, the safest option by far is The Marketplace.
(Especially given the implications that those behind Tormarket may be associated with, or the same people who ran Sheep). All payments
require 2-party authorization. And PGP encryption is mandatory!
As far as I can tell, the main issue at the moment is gaining access to the site,
(no point in having the safest market around if no one can get to it) so I've devised
this walkthrough in order to help those new to i2p (as I was).
Disclaimer I'm new to reddit so you may have to bear with me while I get the hang of the formatting conventions etc.
And visiting TheMarketplace was my first experience with i2p and eepsites (the sites hosted on the i2p network)
so forgive me if I misuse any technical terms - I'll be learning along with the rest of you.
THE GUIDE
STEP 1. Download and install the TAILS operating system (If you aren't already using it).
It has the i2p package you need to reach TMP pre-installed, and is probably the safest and easiest option available.
It can be burned to DVD or installed on a USB stick instructions on the TAILS site.
Creating a persistent volume on a USB stick will let you save your i2p configuration, bookmarks etc.
Video tutorials for Windows and Mac users are available on youtube.
(Thanks to xd2-53 for submitting the links!)
STEP 2. When you first log in to TAILS it'll automatically open the iceweasel browser and
begin connecting to the TOR network. You can close iceweasel as TOR isn't used for accessing sites on the i2p network.
Then from the Applications menu on the top-left corner, go to Internet > and select i2p .
This will start the application and bring up the i2p router console.
At this point I would advise immediately disabling javascript via the NoScript extension .
JS is a possible security risk and TheMarketplace has been designed to function fully without it.
Now it'll take a little time (5-10 mins) for i2p to find peers and to become integrated with the network,
so go take a dump, make a coffee or check how much much that stash of bitcoins is worth today. ;)
STEP 3 Now you have a few options. You can either:
1. Just copy and paste (or type if your fingers need a work out) the site's B32 address:
http://r35rdglu7cjmsxh5qn3v6o5q7cnejanwg4h2viuvaqavpbf5uqaq.b32.i2p
into the address bar which'll take you there directly. (Save it as a bookmark if you have persistence).
2. Add the newhosts.txt to your subscriptions, which will then let you access TMP by typing themarketplace.i2p in the address bar (and will do so every time thereafter if you're using TAILS with persistence/any other browser that's saving your i2p settings).
3. Or (if both of the above fail) you can use a jump service by typing themarketplace.i2p in the address bar and pressing enter.
At the moment this brings up a warning page telling you the Eepsite wasn't found in the addressbook.
It also gives you the option of using a jump service (again this won't be necessary once TMP's in the default address book).
Click the link to the stats.i2p jump service.
The jump service'll redirect you to an information page .
Click 'Save themarketplace.i2p to private address book and continue to eepsite' and this'll take you to...
THE LOGIN PAGE
Of these three options, number 1 is probably the most secure as by using the jump service you are going through a third party (though it does belong to zzz - one of the project's main developers).
See, nuthin' to it. ;) It's a little extra effort for a lot more security.
For more info on i2p I recommend this sub , on Bitcoin this sub,
and for info on GPG (for everyone's safety
all messages must be encrypted) I recommend the main site .
I'll do my best to answer any questions (that I know the answers to) as, I'm sure, will TMPSchultz. Thanks.
Slight typo on the TAILS website URL, it's actually https://tails.boum.org/