Watch our cyber team share their key insights from their investigations into the biggest dark web trends in 2022. 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. The exposed data included customer names, addresses, and purchase details. Shortly after the breach, these records appeared on dark web forums, where they were sold to malicious actors aiming to exploit customers through targeted scams and phishing attacks. This was a undercover Europol mission, with shared intel between the Dutch national police, and later with the American authorities.
- After the arrest, while waiting for extradition to the United States, Cazes apparently died by suicide while in custody in Thailand.
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- There’s also a privacy angle—some users live in countries with censorship or surveillance, and the dark web gives them a space to communicate or access information more freely.
- It is the marketplace which introduced most features you see today on other places such as sticky listing, featured listings, autoshops, monero as a payment, PGP-signed addresses, shared account access for vendors and so on.
AlphaBay Onion Link 2025: I2P Alternative
He communicated with WIRED via encrypted text messages, from a frequently changing series of pseudonymous accounts, after proving his identity by signing a public message with DeSnake’s original PGP key, which multiple security researchers verified. Our site has existed since 2019 and during this time has managed to establish itself in the onion network. Links to the Alphabay market began to spread far beyond simple sites, but already from hand to hand.
It’s not as community-driven as Bohemia, but the polish makes up for it—feels like a pro operation, not a fly-by-night deal. If you’re after a darknet market with variety and a forward-thinking edge, Tor2door Market’s a contender—watch it close in 2025 as that AI kicks in. Your definitive guide to the top darknet marketplaces of 2025—featuring verified onion routing links, cryptocurrency trading insights, vendor ratings, and escrow security details. Dive into the dark pool trading world with Abacus, Alphabay, Torrez, and more. Beginning in September 2021, Abacus Market has established itself as one of the leading dark web marketplaces. After AlphaBay closed, Abacus Market took its place as the world’s largest underground darknet marketplaces.
Its vast scale and the comprehensive services it offered made it the largest criminal marketplace of its time. Law enforcement’s success in shutting down AlphaBay highlighted the risks and challenges of participating in illegal online activities, but its revival also demonstrates the persistence of these underground markets. In a surprising twist, AlphaBay was revived in 2021 under the administration of “DeSnake”, one of the platform’s former co-founders. The new version of AlphaBay was redesigned with improved security features, including support for Monero (a privacy-focused cryptocurrency) and the I2P network, which offered additional layers of anonymity. This revival garnered significant attention within the darknet community, as AlphaBay’s return marked a comeback of a marketplace that had once been synonymous with illegal online trade. The darknet in 2025 is a thriving, evolving ecosystem of anonymous marketplaces accessible via Tor.
Darknet Resources
Fraud offerings like accounts, bank logs, fullz, and credit cards are second to drugs in terms of number of listings. Just over a year later, however, AlphaBay has emerged as a top, if not the top, illicit marketplace. In fact, since AlphaBay’s August 2021 relaunch, the illicit marketplace landscape has been tumultuous to say the least.
Top 10 Darknet Markets Of 2025
Cazes, the platform’s creator, was arrested in Thailand, where he later died in custody under suspicious circumstances. His assets, including cryptocurrency valued in the millions, luxury properties, and vehicles, were seized globally. The dismantling of AlphaBay was a significant achievement in the fight against cybercrime, especially given the scale of illegal activity taking place on the platform.
In this research, we first establish a benchmark by performing the vendor verification task using a BERT-based-cased classifier on the Alphabay-Dreams-Silk Road dataset. Compared to other baselines (please refer to them), the BERT-based-cased classifier outperforms (refer to the table below) by a reasonable margin. Before running experiments, let us merge the required features from different input files and bring them together.
Monero (XMR): Darknet’s Currency
Third to all who keep silent and refuse to cooperate when LE asking, we saw who are real and who rolled over visible from the given sentences. Last I dedicate this to all people who finish something when they start it and keep their promises regardless of the situation. AlphaBay was noteworthy in the world of darknet markets for accepting another cryptocurrency in addition to bitcoin; one of the first marketplaces ever to recognize the potential and support for Monero, implemented at the end of August 2016. It saw a steady growth, with 14,000 new users in the first 90 days of operation.
Key Aspects Of AlphaBay
Although successor markets attempted to use the name, the original AlphaBay remains a key example of a large-scale illegal darknet enterprise, highlighting the significant risks and illegality involved. According to publicly available information on AlphaBay prior to its takedown, one AlphaBay staff member claimed that it serviced over 200,000 users and 40,000 vendors. Comparatively, the Silk Road dark web marketplace, which was seized by law enforcement in November 2013, had reportedly approximately 14,000 listings for illicit goods and services at the time of seizure and was the largest dark web marketplace at the time. AlphaBay was one of the most notorious darknet markets, operating on the Tor network and facilitating illegal trade in various goods, including drugs, weapons, stolen data, and counterfeit currency. Launched in 2014 by Alexandre Cazes, a Canadian citizen, the platform quickly became the largest of its kind, surpassing even the infamous Silk Road. At its peak, AlphaBay hosted more than 200,000 users and 40,000 vendors, offering over 250,000 listings for illegal substances and over 100,000 listings for cybercrime tools, such as malware and stolen identities.
Who Were The Masterminds Behind These Dark Web Marketplaces?
Based on law enforcement’s investigation of AlphaBay, authorities believe the site was also used to launder hundreds of millions of dollars deriving from illegal transactions on the website. When AlphaBay became inaccessible as a result, thousands of its buyers and vendors flocked to the then law enforcement-ran Hansa market to continue their operations. Dutch police, operating servers across the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Germany, capitalized on the eight-fold surge of users visiting the market in the weeks following. The authorities used the time to gather information on high value targets and identified delivery addresses for sizable orders, passing along 10,000 international addresses of buyers to Europol. AlphaBay is a legendary dark web marketplace which was by the FBI’s own words the biggest darknet marketplace to have ever existed. The platform was shutdown in 2017 by authorities during Operation Bayonet but they were unable to capture many of the staff members including its co-founder and security administrator DeSnake.
Common Scams On Dark Web Marketplaces
- Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California filed a civil forfeiture complaint against Alexandre Cazes and his wife’s assets located throughout the world, including in Thailand, Cyprus, Lichtenstein, and Antigua & Barbuda.
- The marketplace set a standard for both security and usability, prompting other platforms to adopt similar practices.
- DeSnake’s eagerness to launch AlphaBay with increased security measures, like AlphaGuard and a decentralization project—an effort to sidestep whatever operational security Cazes blundered, eventually leading to his detainment—was met with some skepticism.
- “AlphaBay name was put in bad light after the raids. I am here to make amends to that.”
- Brandefense’s Dark Web Monitoring is a comprehensive solution designed to continuously track and analyze activity across hidden layers of the internet, including the dark web, deep web, and hacker forums.
Achieving the Decentralized Market Network project for the entire DNM community is what I have aimed for and that is how AlphaBay will (literally) live on forever and the alpha02 legacy honoured. Speaking of disputes, a unique innovation which we are bringing to the DNM scene is our very own Automatic Dispute Resolver (ADR) system. Based on experience we have concluded that majority of the disputes can be handled without third-party involvement given the option. ADR is basically a proposition system between buyer and seller involving extending escrow time, full refund, percentage refund or replacement options.
Buy Staff
AlphaBay’s back from 2021, run by DeSnake, and it’s still got that old-school cred despite just 330+ listings. They’re strict—no fentanyl or ransomware—which suits folks who like cleaner trades, a nod to the decentralized shift. BTC and Monero work here, with multi-signature wallets keeping things tight. It’s not as flashy as it once was (valued at a billion back in the day), but it’s functional, and they vet vendors hard. I’ve heard they’re eyeing a big vendor push in 2025 to get back on top—could mean more listings soon. DrugHub popped up in 2023 and quickly hit 15,000 listings—all drug-related.
Cazes also possessed millions of dollars in cryptocurrency, which has been seized by the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). DarkOwl has assigned assets to monitoring and collecting data from the new AlphaBay Marketplace, leveraging our darknet intelligence capabilities, despite their increased crawler detection measures and ongoing server instability. Our analysts will continue to follow this market’s presence and reputation on the darknet, and provide further updates as this story unfolds. There were also at least half a dozen moderators that helped administer the market and its discussion forum, moderated disputes between buyers and vendors, and promoted the market on Reddit (prior to the shutdown of the DNM subreddit). The indictment from 2017 listed them individually by their monikers and many have been arrested.
Security researchers have been monitoring forums within the cybercriminal underworld to investigate the leading markets operating in 2024. Others are looking for stolen data, hacking services, or even banned books and political content. In May 2015, the site announced an integrated digital contracts and escrow system. The contract system allows users to make engagements and agree to provide services in the future, according to the terms of the contract. By October 2015, less than a year of operating, AlphaBay already had over 200,000 users. At the time of its closing in July 2017, AlphaBay had over 400,000 active users.
Unfortunately, DeSnake’s contributions written in a mixture of English and Russian backfired and senior members of XSS berated them for their lack of operational security and inability to properly understand the dynamics of the Russian language. DeSnake joined the conversation, creating an account with his moniker on September 12, 2021 in attempts to mitigate the marketplace’s potential reputation damage. DeSnake repeatedly pointed to their vouches from Dread and old PGP key pasted to Ghostbin, paste site. As recently as last year, a California Court sentenced Brian Herrell, a Colorado native and AlphaBay moderator who operated under the moniker “Botah” to 11 years in prison for racketeering and for his connections to AlphaBay. Upon his initial arrest, reports suggested he faced up to 20 years for his involvement in the marketplace.
