DarkOwl Vision has successfully archived over 9,000 results from Consortium’s hidden service domains. Consortium was formed in late 2017 shortly after the RAMP marketplace closure, and active through May 2018. The Consortium hidden service featured 15,000 users, including more than 100 verified RAMP dealers who confirmed their identity with a PGP key. This archive provides an excellent investigative referential database for prominent darknet vendors and their aliases. TRM research shows that darknet markets (DNMs) have bounced back following the shutdown of Hydra, the world’s largest such marketplace, by German law enforcement in April 2022. The marketplace was taken down in 2022 by international law enforcement after its servers, located in Germany, were seized.
- Through most of April and May, OMG captured well over 50% of total market share, reaching a peak of 65.2% on April 23, and operated virtually unchallenged by competition, indicating its potential as a Hydra successor.
- Several media productions, intelligence companies, hackers, snoopers, and whistleblowers use the dark web for their respective tasks.
- Solaris users attempting to access the market on January 13th were met with a redirect to Kraken, with a notice announcing that it had successfully taken over Solaris’ cyber infrastructure, GitLab repository and project sources.
- But small-time producers already situated within a country’s borders can saturate the market.
Russia’s Dark Web Markets Prove The Drug War Can’t Be Won
“Moriarty”, the masked figurehead of the largest darknet market, Mega, regularly taunts the Russian authorities, who have failed to arrest the masterminds, while updating his 2.8 million followers with red pill-style videos on masculinity and how to get rich on the drug trade. Hydra Market led the way once again as the highest-earning darknet market in 2022, even though it was sanctioned by OFAC and shut down in a joint U.S.-German operation in April — no other market beat the revenue lead it built up in those four months. As we’ll explore later, the three next-highest earning markets of the year — Mega Darknet Market, Blacksprut Market, and OMG! Market — all gained their initial market share in the wake of Hydra’s collapse, with on-chain data suggesting these markets made concerted efforts to attract former Hydra users and vendors.
Russian Anonymous Marketplace
Moreover, the shift from traditional to online markets in recent years has allowed the drug trade to flourish in the shadows of the dark net. According to the Chainanalysis report, four out of five of the highest-earning dark net markets in 2022 were involved in the drug trade. Recent data presented by blockchain intelligence platform TRM Labs reveals that these markets accounted for an alarming 80% of the $1.49 billion worth of illicit drugs purchased in 2022.
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. However, nearly as soon as Hydra shut down, OMG began seeing high inflows for the first time, more than half of which came from Hydra counterparties. Throughout 2022, we observed a negative relationship between funds sent to regular darknet markets and those sent to single vendor shops. For instance, we see single vendor shop revenue spike beginning around March, around the same time traditional darknet market revenue began to fall. Similarly, single vendor shop revenue fell concurrently with the recovery of traditional darknet markets from around June through end of year.
How Darknet Markets And Fraud Shops Fought For Users In The Wake Of Hydra’s Collapse
The blog is not a substitute for obtaining any legal, financial or any other form of professional advice from a suitably qualified and licensed advisor. The information on this blog may be changed without notice and is not guaranteed to be complete, accurate, correct or up-to-date. Elliptic’s internal data confirms that no activity has been tracked in Solaris-affiliated Bitcoin addresses since January 13th.
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Another interesting thing to note is the fact that Russia was #1 in our last report, and has now dropped to #3. With the emergence of regulations and the price cap on Russian crude oil and oil products, there are now effectively three groups competing for charterers’ deals. The market frequently makes headlines for releasing massive troves of stolen data, often as a way to advertise its services. Fresh Tools Market has become a go-to platform for cybercriminals seeking access to malicious software such as keyloggers, Remote Access Trojans (RATs), and ransomware-as-a-service. The platform is favored by cybercriminals seeking access to accounts that can be exploited for fraud or sold to others. The Russian Market has been around since 2019 and is one of the more prominent dark web marketplaces.
These tools enable a rapidly growing cohort of organizations around the world to safely embrace cryptocurrency-related transactions, products, and partnerships. Elliptic’s Crypto Intelligence functions routinely monitor the dark web ecosystem, ensuring that our clients have access to the latest data and are able to screen the latest risks emerging from illicit dark web markets and stolen data vendors. While darknet markets have largely recovered after Hydra’s closure and fraud shops have not, single vendor shops showed a different pattern. Single vendor shops are standalone shops set up by individual drug vendors who have typically gathered a large customer base on a larger, traditional darknet market.
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According to researchers, the appeal of Russian DNMs in the drug trade lies in the convenience and perceived anonymity they offer. Technological advances have made the battle against cybercrime syndicates all the more challenging for law enforcement, and the same encryption and anonymity tools are being used to run the dark net markets. Similar to the after effects of shutting down AlphaBay and Hansa, the RAMP marketplace closure caused little disturbance to the Russian segment of darknet cryptomarkets. RAMP vendors successfully shifted to other key marketplaces while a hidden service called Consortium attempted to create an “ex-RAMP Verified Vendor Community” specifically for reconnecting with known verified RAMP vendors.
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In 2024, the platform grew significantly in popularity, partly because of its strategic acquisition of users from a number of recently shut-down marketplaces, such as AlphaBay and Incognito Market, which had recently closed their doors. 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. The outcomes were promising, as these joint efforts resulted in arrests and the closure of 50 illicit dark-web platforms, including major drug markets such as the Wall Street Market, Genesis, Alphabay, Hansa, and Valhalla. Russian-language Dark Net Markets (DNMs) have experienced a significant surge in popularity among drug dealers and buyers, emerging as a dominant force in the global illicit drug trade, a new report suggests.
Hydra vendors also offered a robust array of money laundering and so-called “cash-out” services, which allowed Hydra users to convert their bitcoin (BTC) into a variety of forms of currency supported by Hydra’s wide array of vendors. In addition, Hydra offered an in-house mixing service to launder and then process vendors’ withdrawals. Mixing services allowed customers, for a fee, to send bitcoin to designated recipients in a manner that was designed to conceal the source or owner of the bitcoin. Hydra’s money laundering features were so in-demand that some users would set up shell vendor accounts for the express purpose of running money through Hydra’s bitcoin wallets as a laundering technique. According to the indictment, vendors on Hydra could create accounts on the site to advertise their illegal products, and buyers could create accounts to view and purchase the vendors’ products.
It is considered very secure thanks to strict user validations and transparent payment and vendor review procedures. STYX Market focuses specifically on financial fraud, making it a go-to destination for cybercriminals engaged in this activity. To expand their reach, some marketplaces established parallel channels on Telegram. This further complicates monitoring efforts because now you need to search for the related Telegram channels and track activity there and on the marketplace itself. In order to fully understand the rise of Russian DNMs in the drug trade, one must unpack the technological advancements, socio-political factors, and evolving drug market dynamics that have contributed to their unprecedented popularity. If you have any questions regarding this eUpdate, please contact the attorneys profiled below.
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The market is known for its extensive product listings and reputation system that helps buyers evaluate the reliability of vendors. The market emphasizes anonymity and security, conducting transactions exclusively through cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Monero. Here’s a look at the top 10 dark web markets currently dominating this underground space.
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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. It was the first big site where people could anonymously buy drugs using Bitcoin, and it gained a lot of attention, until it was shut down by the FBI in 2013. Four of the top five highest-earning darknet markets in 2022 were conventional, drug-focused darknet markets, while just one, Brian Dumps, was a fraud shop. With the events unfolding across Europe or in the Middle East, the dark web remains an essential component to empower internet freedom for those engulfed in the turmoil.
The fact they were being advertised so publicly in Moscow was slightly bizarre. 2) DNMs operating in former Soviet countries generally employ fewer on-chain operational security measures. Address re-use is rife, as DNM actors in this space appear to operate with more impunity and less concern for law enforcement action than their western counterparts. After Hydra’s shutdown, researchers said revenues from darknet markets dropped from $2.6 billion in 2021 to $1.3 billion in 2022, with much of this decline attributed to Hydra. In January the administrators of UniCC, a darknet site selling stolen credit card details, retired, citing health reasons. Hydra specialised in same-day ‘dead drop’ services, where drug dealers (vendors) hide packages in public places before informing customers of the pick-up location.
In Russia, the post is extremely slow and unreliable, so local dealers came up with a new and more efficient way of distribution,” explained sociologist Alex Knorre. In certain prison camps, up to 80% of residents are confined under Article 228 of the Criminal Code – which bans certain narcotics – nicknamed “the peoples’ statute,” as more citizens are incarcerated for it than any other, many serving over ten year stints for first-time offenses. And yet, over 10,000 Russians keep dying from drug overdoses each year, a toll which has more than doubled since 2019.
Since then, OFAC has added multiple other Russian banks and cryptocurrency exchanges accused of facilitating money laundering operations for Hydra’s “customers,” including Garantex, Bitpapa, and Netexchange. Hydra Market enabled vendors of a wide range of drugs — including heroin, other opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine and LSD — to connect with customers of those narcotics, who could rate sellers on a five-star system, according to U.S. prosecutors. Russian Market has consistently remained one of the most popular and valuable data stores on the dark web. The platform’s activity has increased significantly over the past year, indicating its growing influence and market share in the underground economy.
