In 2019, there were approximately 8,400 active sites on the dark web, selling thousands of products and services daily. The second category consists of data stores, which specialize in stolen information. Australia’s leading at-home genomic healthcare service, offering inclusive, actionable genetic testing and counselling for reproductive and preventative health. Another reason of vital importance of why AlphaBay is returning is how everything ended with alpha02. Our searches for the truth have led us to believe that he was Epstein’d (or should we say Mcafee’d more recently?) in a way which shocked everyone. He did not deserve that, I knew him and he really was a nice, bright guy who was genuine about the community and people regardless of what he did.
Monero (XMR): Darknet’s Currency
And then there’s malware—click the wrong link or download the wrong file, and your device could get infected. Use extreme caution when visiting any darknet market and never share personal information. Established in 2022, Torzon market is one of the biggest and most diverse marketplaces on the dark web.
Data including email addresses, passwords, PGP keys, history, messages and more were tracked. It opened up huge data pools and gave global law enforcement teams insights into thousands of cybercriminals. Abacus Market stands out with 35,000+ listings and $5 million in monthly cryptocurrency trades via Bitcoin (BTC) and Monero (XMR). Serving 15,000+ users and 1,200+ vendors, it holds an 8% share of darknet drug trading.
Key Features Of AlphaBay (Post-Revival)
At its height, AlphaBay’s daily sales ranged between $600,000 and $800,000 USD across 300,000 listings for illicit goods, offered by over 40,000 vendors and viewed by some 200,000 users. The closure of AlphaBay serves as a stark reminder of the precarious nature of the deep web and the inherent risks of participating in illicit markets. The case highlights the ongoing cat-and-mouse game between law enforcement and those operating within the dark web. While many users flocked to AlphaBay for anonymity and convenience, the eventual takedown demonstrates that the façade of security offered by onion sites is not infallible.
What’s The Benefit Of Escrow Security?
A timeline of darknet marketplace evolution, from Silk Road to 2025’s top players. Today’s markets reflect a decade of evolution, balancing user demand with operational security against an ever-present cat-and-mouse game with authorities. N 2025, dark web websites frequently change domains and are often short-lived. Accessing them may require .onion links and the Tor browser, but caution is advised due to legality and cybersecurity risks.
AlphaBay Market’s Official Return
DeSnake argues that new safeguards like these will make AlphaBay that much harder to remove from the dark web this time around. “I had given Cazes many ‘holy grails’ of anonimity, but he chose to use only certain things while he branded other methods/ways as ‘overkill,’” DeSnake writes, in his seemingly foreign-inflected and occasionally misspelled English. “The biggest reason I am returning is to make the AlphaBay name be remembered as more than the marketplace which got busted and the founder made out to have committed suicide,” DeSnake writes. Cazes was found dead of an apparent suicide in a Thai jail cell a week after his arrest; like many in the dark web community, DeSnake believes Cazes was murdered in prison. He was driven to rebuild AlphaBay, he says, after reading about an FBI presentation on the circumstances of Cazes’ arrest that he deemed disrespectful.
AlphaBay, The Largest Online ‘Dark Market,’ Shut Down
Wallet-less payments and multi-signature deals make it a safe bet—I’ve never worried about getting burned, even after a close call with a dodgy vendor once. You can find everything from weed to fake cash to hacking gear, and it’s got a solid rep with a $15 million valuation floating around forums. They take Bitcoin and Monero, and their multi-signature escrow system keeps deals safe. What I like is their no-fentanyl rule—shows they’re trying to keep things less messy. The site’s easy to use, with filters that actually work and a forum where folks swap tips.
Prong 1: Taking Down AlphaBay, The Biggest Darknet Market
Based on law enforcement’s investigation of AlphaBay, authorities believe the site was also used to launder hundreds of millions of dollars deriving from illegal transactions on the website. When AlphaBay became inaccessible as a result, thousands of its buyers and vendors flocked to the then law enforcement-ran Hansa market to continue their operations. Dutch police, operating servers across the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Germany, capitalized on the eight-fold surge of users visiting the market in the weeks following.
- DeSnake has discussed that decentralization project since his earliest posts to the AlphaBay forums, and he acknowledges that it’s still years away.
- I’ve used it; shipping’s discreet—plain packages or DeadDrops—and uptime’s been flawless, rivaling Abacus.
- It’s been a constant back-and-forth between cybercriminals and law enforcement, with each new site trying to be smarter and more secure than the last.
- Quality and validity of the data it provides justify its higher cost over other marketplaces.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Dark Web Marketplaces
The site looks sharp, and vendor profiles are packed with ratings and reviews. They’ve got forums where people actually talk, which builds trust—kinda like the Telegram vibe. For 2025, they’re teasing a peer-to-peer escrow setup—could be a game-changer.
They worked closely with a “security administrator” and second in command known as DeSnake, or simply “DS” for short. According to our historical darknet records, DeSnake had connections in Russia although his true identity and location was not publicly known. In cooperation with the FBI, the Royal Thai Police took steps to organize the extradition of the 24-year old Canadian administrator back to the United States. However, after Cazes was held for exactly a week at the Narcotics Suppression Bureau in Bangkok, reports of his apparent suicide surfaced.
AlphaBay’s servers were seized with the help of authorities in Thailand, Lithuania, Canada, the United Kingdom and France. The operation included the arrest of suspected AlphaBay founder Alexandre Cazes on 5 July, detained on behalf of the US in Thailand. He was held by the Royal Thai Police for approximately seven days before apparently committing suicide while in custody on 12 July 2017. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of California filed a civil forfeiture complaint against Mr. Cazes and his wife. Convert and track crypto rates for darknet marketplace transactions—stay ahead of the game. Layer a VPN (e.g., NordVPN) to mask your IP before entering darknet markets.
Based on our observations from analysis on dark web data using Lunar, we’ve identified the top 7 marketplaces on the dark web in 2025. We developed Lunar to monitor the deep and dark web, including dark web marketplace sites. Alphabay Market was originally operating from 2014 to 2017 with alpha02 and DeSnake as admins and was the biggest darknet market in history. It was suspected as an exit scam; however, a few days after it had gone offline, it was revealed that AlphaBay had been seized and alpha02, aka Alexander Cazes, was caught. Deep web marketplaces are online marketplaces where people can buy and sell illicit goods and services under the protection of the anonymity of the dark web. The goods and services on offer range from leaked credit card details, exploit kits, and hackers for hire to advertisements for hitmen services.
Top Dark Web Marketplaces Of 2025: A Deeper Dive Into Illicit Trade Markets
Torzon offers a premium account option for additional benefits and is valued at approximately $15 million, accepting payments in Bitcoin (BTC) and Monero (XMR). WeTheNorth is a Canadian market established in 2021 that also serves international users. It offers counterfeit documents, financial fraud tools, hacking and malware services. It has an active forum and community along with an extensive user vetting process.
- Law enforcement agencies actively sought to dismantle such platforms, raising questions about the sustainability of operations in the shadowy corners of the internet.
- It’s not as massive as Abacus, but quality’s on point—vendors deliver, and the community’s buzzing on Dread about it.
- You can find everything from weed to fake cash to hacking gear, and it’s got a solid rep with a $15 million valuation floating around forums.
- Seeing the agent laughing and mocking the arrest in a high-spirited manner making it as if he was doing stand-up and the students infront of him were his audience.
- He claims, in fact, not to store any incriminating data on hard drives or USB drives at all, encrypted or not, and declined to explain further how he pulls off this apparent magic trick.
- DarkOwl has assigned assets to monitoring and collecting data from the new AlphaBay Marketplace, leveraging our darknet intelligence capabilities, despite their increased crawler detection measures and ongoing server instability.
One former US law enforcement official involved in the original AlphaBay investigation, who asked not to be named, also expressed doubts. While few of DeSnake’s claims can be confirmed, he has at least enjoyed unusual longevity for a dark web market operator. Additional language analysis reveals other questionable inconsistencies. During this research, DarkOwl discovered a surface web domain that mirrors much of the information DeSnake shared on Dread, but with a Tor link to the market that is not in the mirrors.txt verified links list from AlphaBay.
