Major UK-based online drug vendors told VICE News that turnover had increased by around 25 percent over the three-month UK lockdown through March, April and May. This came with a rash of orders from apparent newcomers with no knowledge of essential darkweb software such as PGP encryption. As of June this year, there are 30 percent more, with 36,000 deals listed. As the routines and restrictions of the working day receded for millions on lockdown, buying drugs online has never been so popular, research shows.
ASAP Darknet Market
Focusing intelligence collection on specialised marketplaces yields better ROI for threat detection and proactive defence. Others, particularly those based in Russia, focus solely on info stealer hacking tools and brokering stolen data. The result of this fallout is a significant fragmentation of darknet marketplaces, with smaller, specialized sites emerging to fill the void left by the collapsing giants. As major players tear each other apart, new, niche markets are carving out their own territories, often with a sharp focus on specific categories of illicit goods. Alright, let’s get into the meat of it—the darknet markets that are ruling 2025. I’ve been poking around these places for a while now, from the giants like Abacus to the old-timers like Vice City.
Regarding profits, darknet vendors do not have to limit their trading to face-to-face interactions, and can instead sell drugs to a potentially worldwide customer base. The evolution from IRC to Telegram represents more than just a shift in tools, it signals a transformation in how cybercrime infiltrates daily digital life. Criminals no longer retreat to hidden enclaves; they co-opt mainstream platforms. This trend will likely accelerate, with future coordination tools mirroring the usability of legitimate apps like Slack or Discord, but weaponised for fraud, ransomware, and data theft. Layer a VPN (e.g., NordVPN) to mask your IP before entering darknet markets.
Abacus Market was launched in 2021 and now lists over 40,000 illicit goods, including hacking tools, counterfeit documents, and listings for drugs. In 2024, it recorded on-chain revenue of $43.3 million, a 183 per cent increase, driven by vendor migrations post-shutdown of competitors, according to Chainalysis’ 2023 market report Darknet revenue in 2023. This marketplace specializes in a variety of illegal products, including drugs, counterfeit documents, and hacking tools. The market is also known for its listings related to financial fraud, such as phishing tools and stolen credit card information. Founded in 2014, BriansClub remains one of the oldest and most infamous dark web markets for stolen credit cards, fullz (complete identity kits), and dumps. This can be stopped if law enforcement agencies can break any link, particularly dark web marketplaces, in the chain.
Explicit And Illegal Content
Like all these other DNMs, the forum features crypto payment rails, with a seemingly exclusive bias towards Bitcoin. Product offerings are mostly drugs, as illustrated by the top banner. Rival DNMs then began launching ‘black PR’ campaigns against one another, they even resorted to DDoSing each other during last summer, with competitors disrupting OMG! On one side, allegedly RuTor operators hacked its largest competitor, WayAway.
First Deep Web Black Markets
It has an active forum and community along with an extensive user vetting process. Alphabay reigns supreme with 60,000+ listings and $20M monthly trades, dominating 20% of darknet commerce via BTC and XMR. Its 25,000+ users and 3,000+ vendors trust its unmatched escrow and scale. Drughub excels in pharmaceutical dark pool trading with 15,000+ listings and $2M monthly via BTC. Serving 8,000+ users and 600+ vendors, it holds a 10% share of drug commerce—an emerging force since 2023.
Video Tutorial: Set Up VPN To Access Darknet Markets Anonymously
It’s known for its strong security features (like a trusted escrow system, PGP two-factor authentication) and anonymity. Our team searched the dark web and put together a list of the most active dark web marketplaces in order to assist you in monitoring illegal trade of products, cybercrime activity, and dark web trends in the dark web space. Launched in September 2022, Torzon Market operates on the Tor network and features over 11,600 illegal products, including drugs and hacking tools. It enhances buyer transparency by importing vendor feedback with PGP proof.
Take for example, drug seller ‘Candy Shop’ and money laundering service provider ‘bitcoin bank’. The actors behind the possible attack on Blacksput threatened the administrators with the leakage of their identities, as well as to reveal sensitive operations between buyers and sellers. Likely, they used similar tactics, and were able to successfully phish some number of Blacksprut users. In both cases, this activity is coming from cybercriminal or semi-criminal elements, which are likely driven not just by their personal interest, but the direction from a third-party. The top performers in darknet marketplaces for 2025, excelling in trade volume, vendor ratings, and market influence. All forms of currency are accepted, most notably Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies like Monero and Litecoin, and the website boasts an impressive uptime compared with other darknet marketplaces and websites.
- All of this has made it one of the most reliable markets still active in 2025.
- Don’t click on suspicious links, be skeptical of what you read, and avoid dark web marketplaces if you don’t want to stumble on illegal activity or content.
- The buyers, or “consumers,” are cybercriminals who use these tools to launch illegal activities.
- We present a view about how such services operate and how different entities interact with each other (Figure 1).
- Then, the trader receives the order and escrow confirmation (step 8).
The Hidden Wiki
Experience the power of The DarkBlue Intelligence Suite and get proactive in your fight against cybercrime. Request a free trial today and strengthen your ability to track and disrupt illicit activities on the dark web. A Canadian market established in 2021, WTN offers over 9,000 products, including narcotics, fake goods, and digital services. It operates in both French and English and has built a reputation for ease-of-use. Known for its publicity stunt releasing millions of stolen card details for free, BidenCash specializes in credit card fraud and identity theft.
CISOs Brace For Supply Chain Attacks With Proactive Attack Surface Monitoring
ASAP Market offers 25,000+ listings and $4 million monthly across BTC, XMR, LTC, and USDT, with a 7% share. Its 14,000+ users and 1,000+ vendors leverage multi-crypto flexibility for seamless darknet trading. Archetyp Market delivers 28,000+ listings and $3.5 million in monthly trades using BTC and XMR, securing a 6% market share.
Alphabay Scales Up
“You’re seeing the evolution of a coordinated law enforcement effort,” the director of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre said. All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. 85% of top markets now use escrow security, up from 60% in 2023—see Alphabay. Alphabay rose to prominence with 400,000+ users and $600M yearly trades, ending in a 2017 bust.
Today, these services allow users to search for any drug, sold by any vendor on any market, enabling trade to flow more freely. Advertised as “the most advanced darknet market ever,” OMG primarily provides illegal drugs, but also offers products like hacking utilities, banking information, and more. It first became active in early July 2020, with deposit volumes so low it appeared to be less of a darknet market and more a personal operation.
- Abacus alone represented nearly 5 per cent of total DNM revenue, underscoring the ongoing scale of underground commerce.
- On one hand, it offers privacy for whistleblowers, journalists, and citizens in oppressive countries.
- Silk Road, AlphaBay, WallStreet and Monopoly Market are all familiar names in the digital graveyard of the dark web.
- It also has its own forum with the same name for discussions between buyers and sellers.
Early participants may see some profit, but that money usually comes from new victims, not actual earnings. Eventually, the system collapses, and most people lose their entire investment. So, if a “business opportunity” sounds too perfect, it probably is. Surprisingly, most guns on the darknet actually start as legal products. The UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) maintains that almost all firearms are originally manufactured through legal means. The dark web is designed in such a manner that it hides the identities and locations of its visitors.
By supplying stolen data, these dark web links fuel many online scams and identity theft operations, playing a critical role in the darker aspects of the internet. Detailed stats on listings, trade volumes, and vendor counts across the top darknet markets. The drug trade, both real and digital, is not only recession-proof but liable to bloom in times of economic growth. We now have decades of evidence showing how drug markets will keep on going, whatever the economic or political weather. And while many governments have floundered and faltered, the online drug trade has come out fighting.
Among them, suboxone and subutex medicines are most frequently mentioned by 2917 times in listings and traces in 10 platforms, followed by roxy series (ie, roxy, roxi, roxies, and roxys) with 2022 times and Lean with 1256 times. Both K9 and M30 were mostly found in Darkbay, within 384 listings in the year 2020, whereas Lean appeared 141 times in Empire listings. We compared our method with the state-of-the-art topic modeling method Machine Learning for Language Toolkit (MALLET) 30 and our model without transfer learning stage (baseline).
