You can access WeTheNorth Market through a secure TOR browser using our official onion URL. We use advanced encryption and an escrow payment system to protect your privacy and ensure your funds are secure during transactions. Nexus represents the upcoming market generation that instills trust in its users.
It is considered very secure thanks to strict user validations and transparent payment and vendor review procedures. 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. It is a hub for financial cybercrime and offers a wide range of illicit services and stolen data that cater to sophisticated cybercriminals.
Niche Trends And Ecosystem Shifts
However, in June 2025, BidenCash’s relevant domains (around 145) were seized by the US Department of Justice. The site gives out free samples of the stolen data every now and then to gain more customers. With its fast rise to fame and focus on money fraud, it’s no surprise that cybersecurity experts are keeping a very close eye on this one.
Other Cannabis Consumer Products: Concentrates, Edibles And Vaping Products
These anonymous marketplaces—operating mainly on the Tor network—are now a primary threat vector for businesses and cybersecurity professionals. The Darknet is often utilized for secure communication, discreet information or file sharing, anonymous research without identity exposure, and occasionally for engaging in illicit activities. It is also recognized for hosting underground black markets(darknet markets), whistleblowing platforms, and discussion boards that champion freedom of speech.
The data and more detailed information about every variable are available through the references 27,28. Not all official variables were matched with parsed variables, so we rejected them for further analysis but kept them in Table 1 to demonstrate how many hypothetical matches were tested. In fact, it is routine for individual’s participating in these dark web communities, par for the course of engaging in the markets. He recommends verifying market employees carefully, and to weed out law enforcement infiltration through barium meal tests.
Harm Reduction & Risk Factors
Abacus alone represented nearly 5 per cent of total DNM revenue, underscoring the ongoing scale of underground commerce. Whilst a great many products are sold, drugs dominate the numbers of listings, with the drugs including cannabis, MDMA, modafinil,108109110 LSD, cocaine, and designer drugs. One of the central76 discussion forums was Reddit’s /r/DarkNetMarkets/,777879 which has been the subject of legal investigation, as well as the Tor-based discussion forum, The Hub. North America, Northern Europe and Western Europe are also major consumer hubs. According to the latest Index, North America’s average drug trade score rose by 0.13 points, while the scores for Northern Europe and Western Europe increased by 0.31 and 0.27, respectively. Emerging markets in Asia and Latin America, such as China, Vietnam and Venezuela, are also becoming more involved in drug purchasing and, to some extent, manufacturing.
- Apart from his interest in the darknet, he is also passionate about chess, enjoying the strategic depth it offers.
- It was a period of COVID-19 restrictions, so we have data on the decreasing amounts of drugs distributed monthly in Russia during COVID-19 restrictions.
- Wastewater analysis can also detect fluctuations in patterns of illicit drug use across the week.
- This method, often called a demand-side approach, however, is prone to underestimation due to the misreporting and under-reporting of use (Udrisard et al., 2022).
- Saheed earned his degree in Technology and Ethics from the University of Lagos in Nigeria.
- In R, we extracted relevant data of the html-based chat corpora and stored these data as a dataset for further analysis.
EU Drug Market: Cannabis — Retail Markets
Payments are made exclusively in Bitcoin, the virtual currency allowing a similar degree of anonymity to both sides of the transaction. Within Canada for example, the price range in dollars per gram was from 6.15 in Montreal to 7.82 in Toronto, while in the US, the range was from 7.58 in Seattle to 18.08 in Washington DC. This analysis is for informational purposes only and does not condone or promote illegal activities. It is essential to adhere to local laws and regulations regarding cannabis consumption and purchase. This vetting process helps keep the community “clean” from spies, law enforcement, or anyone who might pose a risk.
Abacus Market Conducts Likely Exit Scam Amid Increasingly Unstable Western Darknet Marketplace Landscape
For cybersecurity professionals, journalists, and policymakers, understanding how these systems evolve is crucial to monitoring and mitigating the impact of underground economies. Launched in 2020, Cypher Marketplace sells fraudulent documents, stolen credit cards, fake IDs, and malware. Its emphasis on user anonymity and document forgery makes it a core tool for identity fraud. In a sea of bloated, chaotic darknet markets, CannaExpress is refreshingly focused. By zeroing in exclusively on cannabis, and backing it with a modern infrastructure, privacy first design, and fast, intuitive UX, it’s positioning itself as the go to market for cannabis enthusiasts who want a clean and safe experience. Overall, dark-web marketplaces inherently involve substantial risk, and users must thoroughly understand these threats.
Without vendors, darknet marketplaces cannot operate or generate profits, making them a more strategic enforcement target. The takedown of Bohemia and Cannabia represents a significant milestone in the ongoing battle against dark web marketplaces. These once-dominant platforms, which facilitated millions of euros worth of illegal transactions, have now been dismantled, sending a clear message to those who believe they can operate in the shadows of the internet. Data on the amounts used by the various types of users were compiled using complementary information from the European Web Survey on Drugs (EWSD). Taken together, these data were used to estimate the illicit retail market size for herbal cannabis and cannabis resin respectively. Cannabis resin was reported as shipping primarily from Germany (26 %), France (21 %), the Netherlands (19 %) and Spain (13 %).
Common Scams On Dark Web Marketplaces
“Because we’re still in the middle of the pandemic, it’s hard to measure what’s a transient effect and a long-term effect,” he adds. Christin does note, though, that Cannazon has been online for well over a year. That suggests its sudden sales growth likely isn’t simply due to the usual cycle of a dark web market coming online and quickly gaining users before it’s shut down by law enforcement. The analysis reveals that the internet-based cannabis market exhibits characteristics of monopolistic competition. Sellers offer differentiated products with quality variations, leading to price dispersion. Both listing characteristics and country-specific factors influence cannabis prices.
Users reported service outages and problems accessing their accounts, fueling concerns of an “exit scam,” a common tactic used by dark web market operators to steal funds before abruptly shutting down their platforms. These fears were confirmed when one of Bohemia’s lead developers allegedly went rogue, siphoning off small amounts of Bitcoin over a period of several months. The market’s administrators described this event as “a shameful and disgruntled set of actions,” blaming the developer for contributing to the site’s eventual downfall. In January 2022, for example, the logo of the Haribo brand of sweets was found on bags of cannabis products during law enforcement operation in southern France (Vergnenegre, 2022). Cannabis influencers, that is, individuals promoting cannabis products to their followers on social media platforms, have become particularly active on Instagram.
The main drug sold online is cannabis, followed by synthetic drugs, cocaine and, to a lesser extent, opioids. Heroin and other opioids do not have a significant presence online, as their sale is highly regulated and controlled. This report examines the prices of cannabis sold on the anonymous internet marketplace Abacus Market. The analysis is based on data collected from 500 listings by approximately 140 sellers, originating from 18 countries.
In its study, the EMCDDA scraped buyers’ review postings on the three dark web markets, allowing them to count the individual sales of different drugs. Since only Cannazon left the specific pricing information for its drugs visible in buyer feedback, the researchers limited their quantitative findings to just marijuana sales. They also only scraped markets that stayed online reliably enough to study; they say that Empire, for instance, widely believed to be the largest dark-net drug market, was down so often that they gave up on measuring its sales.
