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. Darknet marketplaces remain central to illicit trade in 2025, with evolving business models, payment systems, and law enforcement responses. This survey highlights active and recently shuttered markets with actionable metrics and intelligence for threat hunters, CISOs, and red team leaders. Blockchain forensics and artificial intelligence have advanced crypto crime detection by trawling humongous databases in order to flag suspicious transactions. AI simplifies pattern recognition, and blockchain forensics leverages openness in trying to follow illegal transactions and construct lawful evidence.
Exposure To Malware And Scams
- It is believed that big players with large operations are the majority of the markets and vendors that are still up and running.
- Strengthening Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) measures, along with advanced blockchain analytics and AI-driven monitoring, can help mitigate illicit activities while preserving the benefits of digital finance.
- To put that into perspective, in 2019, 49 active marketplaces collectively had a total revenue that was less than $1.5 billion.
- At publishing time there is no indication that Abacus has been taken down by law enforcement but this scenario is not to be ruled out yet.
- Some dark web listings claim to offer services like hacking-for-hire or even hitmen.
After that, many other marketplaces kept trying to take its place and become the top dark web market. However, legal bodies and law enforcement operations made this impossible and shut down these illegal communities. Genesis Market and BidenCash, two top dark web marketplaces, were also shut down in 2023 and 2025, respectively. This can be stopped if law enforcement agencies can break any link, particularly dark web marketplaces, in the chain. Hence, it should be the top priority to track these platforms and shut them down as quickly as possible. Some vendors offer services to help people “clean” illegally obtained funds using cryptocurrency and fake transactions.
The Rise Of Crypto Fraud
Monero’s ring signatures, stealth addresses, and RingCT obfuscate transaction details—enhancing privacy and hindering traceability The Rise of Monero. Sites such as Abacus and Russian Market accept both currencies to broaden their appeal. Interestingly, this vendor has also been a trusted supplier for OFAC-designated fentanyl traffickers Alex Adrianus Martinus Peijnenburg and Matthew Simon Grimm, having received close to $1.5 million in purchases from them.
We have shown that the U2U network is resilient to abrupt external shocks, such as marketplace closures, and does not need the centralised structure of DWMs to survive. To answer this question, we consider the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the evolution of stable U2U pairs. Previous studies reported that COVID-19 had a strong impact on DWMs due to delays and damage to the shipping infrastructure caused by border closures37,38. We start by investigating the number of new stable U2U pairs and their trading volume during the COVID-19 period. Users in stable pairs meeting both inside and outside DWMs have been growing over the last two years, since the shutdown of AlphaBay9, the largest DWM at the time. In 2020, a total of 6778 pairs of users in stable pairs met inside a DWM, corresponding to 192% of the 2019 level and to 255% of the 2018 level, see Fig.
The Future Of Darknet Transactions
A proactive approach can help balance security with the continued growth of the crypto ecosystem. In addition, crypto-enabling financial crime is growing and needs advanced blockchain analytics and regulation. Regulators are filling Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) loopholes to enhance compliance and traceability.
Interaction With Online Wallets
Sanctioned nations use cryptocurrencies to evade economic restrictions, conducting cross-border transactions and mining digital assets to generate revenue. The decentralized nature of crypto complicates enforcement, prompting governments to develop advanced tracking strategies. Emerging threats include the use of stablecoins for financial stability and privacy coins for anonymity. Authorities are strengthening forensic blockchain analysis and regulatory measures to counter crypto-enabled illicit financing while balancing financial innovation. Crypto anonymity tools, such as mixing services (tumblers) and privacy coins, enhance transaction privacy by obscuring the origin of funds. These tools pool and redistribute transactions, making it challenging to trace senders and recipients.
China-based Vendors And Novel Synthetic Opioids
The marketplace has a simple interface, lets users filter logs easily, and accepts Bitcoin, Monero, and Litecoin for payments. Understandably, as in the case with most illicit trade markets, you don’t even need to verify your email Awazon. These marketplaces are full of risks (security, legal, ethical issues – all of them).
Author & Researcher Services
(b) Trading volume in dollars sent to a DWM compared with the total trading volume in its surrounding U2U transactions. The dashed line is the bisector and allows to easily compare the two trading volumes. (c) Total monthly trading volume sent to all DWMs and exchanged in all unique U2U pairs.
3 Financial Security
However, there is currently no literature that comprehensively describes the security mechanisms implemented by dark web markets. Previous studies have mainly focused on social aspects, including analysis of products sold, emerging criminal patterns, criminal ecosystems, and key actors 14, 19, 20, 23, 24, 34. However, the security mechanisms used by the dark web markets have not been addressed in enough depth. In this paper, we aim to investigate the security elements of different dark web markets.
Some countries have just one or a few vendors with a loyal customer base and a wider selection of goods. For example, in India, one of the most frequent listings is for generic medication, which mostly comes from the first vendor shown below. While the US market is best characterized by its diverse product offerings, other countries offer regional specialties.
This is to protect their users and themselves from potential criminal evidence. Therefore, while this is implemented as a functional security mechanism, its technical security remains highly unclear. In this subsection, we explore the security mechanisms applied to the account. As market operators, it is necessary to apply appropriate mechanisms to protect user accounts, which can help users avoid potential account loss, theft, scams, etc. Table 3 provides an overview of selected dark web markets’ account security mechanisms implementation.
- This new reality is part of a broader ecosystem trend in which stablecoins also occupy a sizable percentage of all crypto activity, demonstrated by total growth YoY in stablecoin activity around 77%.
- Previous studies reported that COVID-19 had a strong impact on DWMs due to delays and damage to the shipping infrastructure caused by border closures37,38.
- Interestingly, new sites get more hype, and it even becomes difficult to shut them down, as they have better security than the older ones.
- Despite minor accessibility inconveniences, these strengths have solidified its position among the top dark-web marketplaces in 2025.
- TRM’s risk management platform includes solutions for transaction monitoring and wallet screening, entity risk scoring – including VASP due diligence – and source and destination of funds tracing.
- Therefore, users have the same opportunity to check whether their nickname is showing correctly after logging in.
And, of course, think twice before sharing too much personal details online. That all is for general internet activities, you can guess how crucial having a VPN is when you hop onto something like the dark web. Then, you can set up 2FA (two-factor authentication) for that extra touch of security in case someone somehow figures out your password. If you ever have to connect to public Wi-Fi, make sure to use a VPN to keep your browsing safe and private. They’re tightening security and carefully screening anyone who wants to join.
Our findings suggest that understanding the behavior of key players in dark web marketplaces is critical to effectively disrupting illegal activities. Dark web marketplaces (DWMs) are online platforms that facilitate illicit trade among millions of users generating billions of dollars in annual revenue. Recently, two interview-based studies have suggested that DWMs may also promote the emergence of direct user-to-user (U2U) trading relationships. Here, we carefully investigate and quantify the scale of U2U trading around DWMs by analysing 31 million Bitcoin transactions among users of 40 DWMs between June 2011 and Jan 2021. We find that half of the DWM users trade through U2U pairs generating a total trading volume greater than DWMs themselves. We then show that hundreds of thousands of DWM users form stable trading pairs that are persistent over time.
