Nucleus is the second, primed competitor besides Agora to re-position itself on the podium of dark market stardom. But Nucleus has a lot of troubling issues that I think need to be questioned. It will and has received a large proportion of Evolution vendor and customer migration. I think people need to exercise extreme care when using Nucleus. This is not an invested or personal attack on Nucelus, but it's by far the shadiest marketplace on the DNM ladder since Evolution. And here's my reasoning...
3 good reasons to be careful with Nucleus
Number 1.
**Intense shilling.**
The advertisement for Nucleus on DeepDotWeb is consistently padded with reviews that are obviously posted by the administrators of Nucleus. This has been a committed campaign to deceive users since Nucleus' conception. The shilling is so obvious that DeepDot has attached a warning to Nucleus regarding the excessive and persistent posting of fake reviews. The shilling also stretches to Reddit and onion based discussion forums. Nucleus is followed by a large crowd of fanatical supporters who are make unnatural and sometimes hysterical posts that are favorable to Nucleus. A market is expected to advertise, but doing so through deceptive methods shows signs of desperation and greed.
Number 2.
**Inability to ban scammers.**
The word inability could be replaced with unwillingness here because both are accurate. Nucleus has shown that it is comfortable allowing proven FE scammers to continue to conduct scams. Vendors that are imitating real vendors appear to still be vending on Nucleus with FE requirements, even when reported. Nucleus has recognized that fake vendors are rampant and attempted shift blame and dissuade user complaints resulting from scams, but the vendors remain active, so one has to consider who is profiting from allowing obvious FE scammers to remain. Nucleus has publicly claimed that the scams are a consequence of FE and Nucleus will therefore not accept responsibility for them. Source: Nucleus' Official Reddit account. It has been alleged that members of their support staff are vendors, and are scamming Bitcoin from winning disputes. This is not one or two allegations, but a truck load. Several people report being ripped off by the Nucleus support staff, not receiving a response or being ignored. There are outright reports of Nucleus vendors, even ones with reputations and history, being scammed when their Bitcoin balances are showing some considerable volume. A quick look on the Nucleus threads on The Hub will show numerous allegations of Nucleus purporting to have scammed its vendors. And finally, after logging into my 2-3 month old Nucleus account to see if the 0.1 BTC test deposit was still sitting safely in my wallet, alas, it wasn't. This only compounded my concerns and had it not been for that, I likely would not have posted this thread.
Vendor HonestCocaine reports to have been scammed by Nucleus. Multiple users also stating that their deposits never arrived on Nucleus or that Bitcoins disappeared from their accounts. The allegations are widespread by many different users and have regularly been posted since Nucleus started. Source: The Hub.
Number 3.
**Evolution similarities with UI.**
Now I'm not going to claim these are the words of Angel Gabriel herself but a number of people have raised concerns about the strong similarities between Nucleus and Evolution. It appears to have very similar structural similarities but does have definite cosmetic changes.
This site looks exactly as Evolution. Only lavout changed a LITTLE bit. 5000 Listings in one or 2 month. Growing fast is not healthy. It is a nice Scam Operation, my word. Same big fraud-sellers as everytime. Honest sellers and buyers open your eyes and go to another market but not here. Go to markets that have more experience than this new one. I promise it will end up in a big scam.
looks for me exactly like evolution, just a little bit updated. and no vendor fee at all. must be a place for scammers and at the end the whole marketplace will scam you all. be aware guys!
It seems to be a modern version of evo, the forum is very suspicions. Hell no I don't want to lose my money again! To these thieves!!!
This market looks exactly like Evo... is this ok? hi everyone. after evo falling, ive been looking for a new market. well i need to say, that this nucleus market, and forum, are built exactly to the bullseye like evolution market. does this arouse suspicion? is there anyway to make sure its not the same folks trying to pull one on us again?
SCAM SITE. The support is a mafia. i understand why they don't do fees for vendors haha. Some guys from the support of nucleus are vendors, and they are scamming on winning disputes. you can buy little things on nucleus, like pornsite or piece of weed, but never spend a lot of money on nucleus.
A few of the most notable allegations.
Final words
Nucleus has become, and will continue to become one of the largest dark net markets. It is impossibly fast, and will use that traction to take the edge on Agora, combined with the swift UI that everyone loved on Evolution. The reason the centralized explosion on Evo was so effective was become vendors all dived into the next biggest thing and it gobbled them up simultaneously. I don't think the Nucleus administrators have administered much discretion of care with handling their increased usage. This says to me that these operators have questionable intentions, and may not plan to be running markets for a long time. I don't care for greed, and when I look at Nucleus I see it loud and clear.
Take this as FUD. I simply wish people to take care when using Nucleus. If it is struggling at this stage then the future does not look good. I think that the operator's probability to exit scam is high, if not astronomically high. The rampant FE on Nucleus, thus widespread scamming, shady operating practices by the support, and a daily increasing amount of allegations of impropriety is all coming together to form a very clear picture.
Take care /r/dnm
I had one deposit that didn't show up. The reports of problems like these are getting buried quick on the forums which are poorly monitored themselves.
The problem with my deposit seemed to be with depositing to an address I was already sending a deposit. Definitely make sure you get a new address for every transaction.