Comparison of darknet markets

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A darknet market (also known as a DNM) is a website operating in a darknet (e.g., Freenet, I2P, TOR) through which goods and services (typically drugs) are traded. The legal status of the traded goods depends varies from country to country. The purpose of this comparison is to provide an overview of the constantly changing phenomenon of darknet markets. The comparison in durability, success, and security should enable people to evaluate markets and make independent decisions before using them.

The "Silk Road" (founded 2011-01-31) was the first known darknet market. With the combination of TOR, Bitcoin and PGP it established the central market scheme.

According to their major features and design, at least five archetypes of marketplaces can be distinguished.

1. Forum Markets. These are basically forums where vendors present their products, customers post feedback and have discussions. These markets neither have an online shopping interface nor a reputation or escrow system. Trusted members of the community may act as escrow agents.
2. Centralized Markets. The original "Silkroad" was the first of this kind. Buyers and vendors have their bitcoins in an online wallet which is controlled by the markets admin and therefore rely totally on the good will of the markets admins. Several big scams have happened in the past in which millions of dollars (in bitcoin) were stolen.
3. Multi-Signature Markets. In this type of market, funds will be deposited in a multi-signature wallet. At least three parties (usually: buyer, vendor, market admin) have the control over these wallets. Two of them have to agree to release the funds. The most elaborate marketplace of this kind was "The Marketplace". Second generation marketplaces have yet to gain serious market share.
4. Decentralized Markets. There are some projects which are currently developing software to host drug marketplaces in a distributed manner. As of 2017, they have yet to be adopted by the darknet market community.
5. Beside that some vendors maintain their own single vendor web shop. These won’t be listed here because they are too numerous and there is no way of protecting against scams. Some vendor shops are listed here: https://dnstats.net/vendor-shops/1 .

All markets are hosted either as Tor Hidden Services (Onion Sites), i2p sites (eepsites) or another kind of p2p or darknet. Therefore they can not be accessed with a normal web browser.