After the demise of the original SR, Atlantis, SMP, and BMR leaving for the time being, there is a huge clusterfuck for the title of top dog Darknet Market.
Because of this, you'll see many brand new sites pop up. Some will be legit and will have great intentions; however, that does not make them automatically safe.
Others will be made solely for the purpose of scamming a new batch of suckers. We've already heard reports of various new markets scamming users, and I'm sure they'll continue to roll in.
In this dark time, please remember to BE CAREFUL. Always be aware of the risks involved in trying a new market. Never play around with money you can't afford to lose. Do your homework on each site and vendor.
IMPORTANT: We (the mods) list various sites in the sidebar. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of all Darknet Market sites, but these are the ones we are aware of that we have not received scamming reports from. Some of these are brand spankin' new and we know absolutely nothing about them. Please don't take the action of us listing them as an endorsement to the site's safety/reliability.
Stay safe, my friends, and always use your best judgement when trying a market. We hope that a clear leader emerges soon, but for now it is much better to step back and bide your time than be a part of another debacle like SMP.
Great post.
One more thing: to all of you brave motherfuckers who are planning to be the guinea pigs for these brand new sites - please post about your experiences. I think that as long as we all keep in touch about our experiences with these sites/vendors, we should hopefully begin to gather enough information to start making better informed decisions about which marketplaces are the best/safest/least likely to be run by assholes and which marketplaces are probably going to try to steal our shit again.