Feedback on the 'Darknet market' Wikipedia page

Hi all

For the last couple of months I've built the following page from scratch, hoping to capture the under-documented ecosystem that are modern Darknet markets.

I've reached a point where I'm pretty happy with it, so I'm looking for some feedback before developing it any further, e.g. to a Wikipedia featured article level.

My goal is for the page to be free of bias and unverified opinion and to serve as a trusted introduction to anyone who asks the question 'wtf is a darknet market?'. It is not intended to be a guide on how to use markets, but to provide a reliable source of facts for anyone wanting to explore further in an informed fashion.

Notable thanks to:

and

Feedback appreciated :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet_market


Comments


[21 Points] None:

How much adderall or pure gwern extract did it take you to create all of that? Great work!


[11 Points] gwern:

Since about 2006 The Farmer's Market operated on Tor,

This is incorrect. IIRC, according to the complaint, TFM was only a Tor hidden service for a few months and then went back to a clearnet site, and spent most of its existence as a clearnet site. Its role as a predecessor is much overrated, other than being an excellent illustration of how dangerous it is to try to use Western Union & Paypal.

The first high profile marketplace to use both Bitcoin and Tor was The Silk Road, operated by Ross Ulbricht under pseudoname "Dread Pirate Roberts" from 2011[14][15] until October 2013 when it was shut down by the FBI.[16] The shut down was described by news site DeepDotWeb as 'the best advertising the dark net markets could have hoped for' following the proliferation of competing sites this caused.

This is really brief and I think you underplay the role of SR1. SR1 invented the business model of Tor+Bitcoin+escrow (I don't believe Farmer's Market did escrow at all, and I think the Russian/Eastern-European forums had some minimal forms of escrow where trusted members might handle escrow for a deal, but nothing systematic), and was a complete paradigm shift from the earlier generations of tiny sketchy person-to-person deals which you needed an 'in' to do anything with, and which were rife with scammers. Can anyone seriously compare SR1 with, say, Topix? What online drug market before SR1 came anywhere close to its volume, its freedom of access to anyone with a web browser, its transparency?

Sites named Atlantis, closing in September 2013, and Project Black Flag, closing in October 2013, each stole their users' bitcoins in the panic shortly following the Silk Road's shut down.[20]

Atlantis closed before SR1, used Litecoins, and may or may not have stolen the coins, I've never been able to get a clear answer on that. I'm not sure why you mention PBF when at the same time, it was a tiny marginal marketplace with only a handful of vendors and much less important than TorMarket or Sheep or the then-upcoming SR2; when PBF exit-scammed, no one much cared.

Black Market Reloaded's popularity increased dramatically after the closure of Silk Road and Sheep Marketplace[25] however in late November 2013, the owner of Black Market Reloaded announced that the website would be taken offline due to the unmanageable influx of new customers this caused.[26]

BMR should be discussed before Sheep, because for a lot of people, the migration went SR1->BMR->Sheep->SR2

In November 2014 a large scale operation, Operation Onymous by the FBI and UK's National Crime Agency caused the shut down 27 hidden sites, including some of the largest markets at the time including the Silk Road 2.0,[30] Pandora and 12 other drug markets.[31] The remaining 13 sites sold counterfeit cards, currency and identity documents.

Probably worth mentioning that 2014 was also marked by tremendous flux in markets as everyone scrambled to replace SR1, and note that the market structure was largely a triumvirate of SR2/Agora/Evolution. You also don't mention the opening of SR2, the arrests of its employees, and the first hack; the subsequent mentions just come out of nowhere.

In addition, it's not really meaningful to say that Pandora was shut down by the raid, because the market had been nonfunctional and an exit scam for weeks before that. (Buyers could log in and deposit bitcoins, but nothing else.) As well, the '12' number is wrong; several of those were not markets, they were vendor shops, not all shut down because of Onymous (Bungee54 didn't), and iirc 'Black Market' may've been a scam like Pandora.

Many sites use Bitcoin multisig[52] transactions to improve security and reduce dependency on the site's escrow.

Unfortunately, multisig is actually pretty rare, and when it's offered at all, is typically in a watered-down form that may not add any security against exit-scams or LE seizures. TMP led the way towards better markets (and deserves credit for introducing multisig and at least a mention in the article) but no one really wants to follow.

Some of the most popular vendors are now opening up dedicated own online shops separate from the large market places.[58]

Vendor shops preceded the markets as Tor hidden services. That's why I emphasize the market aspect of SR1; people sold drugs over Tor before January 2011, it's just it was done by one-man shops with no escrow or recourse, which inherently made them dangerous and unscalable and thus, unpopular.

Following repeated failures of centralised infrastructure, a number of decentralised marketplace software alternatives have arisen using block chain technology, including OpenBazaar,[60] Shadow,[61] BitBay,[62] Bitmarkets,[63] and Nxt.[64]

Not that anyone uses them. And OB right now cannot be used anonymously, AFAIK.


[7 Points] DankNetMarkets:

Feedback: Remove all links you have in "references" to this site: "darknetmarkets . o rg"

(in every wikipedia entry you are editing)

The only reason this site exists is to promote phishing links to the markets and steal users credentials & BTC.

Read more:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/3bynx8/httpsdarknetmarketsorgmarkets_is_promoting/

And:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/3bwgfo/httpsdarknetmarketsorgmarkets_scammer_link/


[4 Points] None:

Why is it that people feel the need to plaster the Internet with all things DNM? We don't need any more publicity and we certainly don't need a Wikipedia page. It's only drawing even more LE attention to the markets.


[2 Points] pecrophilyak:

"My goal is for the page to be free of bias and unverified opinion and to serve as a trusted introduction to anyone[...]"

right on. this is a very ambitious project and I appreciate it A LOT. cuz that the point you come to when breaking it down: a)you cant avoid information to be spread out thru clearnet. period. b) if you cant avoid information to be released and distributed just release a BS/hoax/phishing/scamming-free version of the information yourself. c)in the whole bitcoin/darknet(markets) story time and knowledge have proven to be crucial for security and pretty valuable either. any advantage in time/knowledge most often was and is used to scam/extort/misguide people. putting up a DNM wiki page respectively monitoring any existing page should be done by the ones with a spirit thats pro community. a carer, a sharer. that is you - thanks very much! regarding actual content, well, just fine, couldnt find any flaws; some things were already mentioned. the TCF forum/board isnt mentioned (#1 ccs fullz/hacked accounts/counterfeits+forgery,private escrow etc etc). the founder (a02) of alphabay emerged from TCF when it was shut down to never come back online again. a02 set up alphabay right after that but I guess you wouldnt call apbay a TCF successor. missing the exact date when it went down though (late 2014?).

added this info in case you are planning to give detailed info on market history on the wiki page. nevermind if useless :>


[1 Points] None:

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