Dark web websites: 10 Onion sites to explore

This is likely due to the fact that cryptocurrency prices have been largely stagnating in H and H1 2023, which resulted in less interest shown by the mainstream population. New websites and forums were created nearly overnight and very quickly filled the gap left by the sites taken down by authorities. This, however, did little to reduce the supply of illicit goods and services on the dark web. Looking ahead, the focus will likely shift toward decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), which could revolutionize governance and decision-making within darknet platforms. By eliminating centralized control, these systems promise greater resilience and adaptability, ensuring the continued growth and evolution of the darknet economy.

Multiseller network

As cryptors, loaders, and stealers become more sophisticated, and underground markets remain resilient, organizations must prioritize robust cybersecurity measures in 2025. Hansa was an online darknet market which operated on a hidden service of the Tor network. Archetyp Market functioned as a Tor-based hidden service, accessible only through specialized darknet browsers that utilize onion routing protocols to anonymize user traffic and location data. In many places, including the U.S., the UK, and the EU, accessing the dark web is legal for legitimate purposes. However, many sites on the dark web host illegal content or activities, and engaging with those can lead to serious legal consequences. In some countries, like Russia or China, dark web access itself may be blocked or penalized.

How do I verify onion routing links?

Hosted in Canada and utilizing Cloudflare suggests efforts to improve performance and potentially mitigate DDoS attacks. A significant positive signal is that Google Safe Browsing reports the domain as clean, indicating no detected malware or phishing attempts. This is a strong indicator that Google does not currently see the website as malicious.

Top Darknet Markets Shops Sites – 2025

Prices are, however, expected to fall in case of a new cryptocurrency upturn, as this would lead to increased interest and hype from the general public. As the Dark Web market evolves, its operators adopt strategies and priorities similar to those of traditional marketing and retail businesses. Though Mega Darknet Market typically serves a Russian customer base, the drug revenue shown in the chart above likely came from customers based in Europe. Mega clearly dominated the realm of wholesale drug purchases, capturing 51.9% of that segment.

Cybersecurity News

To help Genesis Market victims and prevent future crimes, the Dutch Police created a Check your hack tool that lets victims see if their credentials were sold or for sale on Genesis Market. The tool is still available today, and interested parties simply need to enter their email address to place an inquiry. If the address is in one of the cybercrime datasets, the person will receive an email that includes personalized instructions on how to clean up their computer and make it safe again. In the first 24 hours of launching Check your hack, two million people took advantage of the service. So far, five million people have used the tool, and over 13,000 victims have been notified that their computer was infected, and received instructions to help them make their device safe again. On-chain data from BitInfoCharts shows that the daily number of monero transactions has halved from this time last year.

Keep your identity hidden

One of the most notable trends in recent years is the development of user-friendly interfaces that mimic mainstream e-commerce platforms. This shift has not only enhanced the overall user experience but also attracted a broader audience to darknet marketplaces. Features such as advanced search filters, customer reviews, and escrow systems have become standard, ensuring transparency and trust between buyers and sellers.

Data Exploitation

For instance, market-only sellers are entities classified as sellers only in markets, but that may promote U2U transactions with other sellers, hence being part of the S2S network. Therefore, the S2S network can be seen as a proxy for a distribution network of illegal products. In contrast to the other types of sellers, the median income of U2U-only sellers increases after operation Bayonet. Moreover, we observe a trend of increase in their median income relative to the value before operation Bayonet—an increase of almost six times by the end of the period of observation (see Supplementary Information S4). Further supporting this interpretation, we observe that the trading volume of the U2U network increases after Bayonet, while the trading volume of markets decreases (see Supplementary Information Section S4).

Notes from the Dark Web: Analyzing Ukraine-Related Chatter in Key Forums

• In general, by understanding the operation of key players within the DWM ecosystem, our work highlights how appropriate strategies can be designed to counteract the online trade of illicit goods more effectively.
• This is achieved by overwhelming the targeted website’s server with thousands of connection requests, causing it to crash.
• The dark web is a hub for cybercrime services, with a wide array of hacking tools and fraud services available for purchase.
• In the below graph, the currencies included are Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Tether.
• In the U2U network, an edge connects nodes that are not necessarily users of the same market.
• We find that trading properties of buyers and sellers reflect the dominance of DWMs in the ecosystem.

Additionally, we analyse the U2U network of transactions, i.e., the transactions between pairs of market first-neighbors where the source and destination nodes are market users without the market as an intermediate. In the U2U network, an edge connects nodes that are not necessarily users of the same market. Previous studies have shown that, although the number of users and transactions is larger in markets, the trading volume in the U2U network is larger than that of markets13. The largest component of the S2S network one year before and one year after the operation Bayonet.

Cloned Credit Cards and Cardholder Data

Pudgy Penguins is emerging as one of the strongest NFT-native brands of this cycle, shifting from speculative “digital luxury goods” into a multi-vertical consumer IP platform. Its strategy is to acquire users through mainstream channels first; toys, retail partnerships and viral media, then onboard them into Web3 through games, NFTs and the PENGU token. “After major exchanges delisted XMR, we observed a significant increase in bitcoin inflows,” Jardine said in an interview with CoinDesk. 85% of top markets now use escrow security, up from 60% in 2023—see Alphabay. Alphabay rose to prominence with 400,000+ users and $600M yearly trades, ending in a 2017 bust.

• It’s not as massive as Abacus, but quality’s on point—vendors deliver, and the community’s buzzing on Dread about it.
• Cybersecurity companies and researchers monitoring darknet markets face legal and ethical restrictions.
• The DDoS attacks listed below are characterized by their target, number of access requests, quality, speed, and duration.
• It runs an onion site to help like-minded people mobilize more securely and anonymously.
• In a DDoS attack, the server is bombarded with artificial traffic, which makes it difficult for the server to process web requests, and it ultimately goes down.

Cryptocurrency Transactions

Transactions within dark markets predominantly involve cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Monero, or Ethereum. These digital currencies provide a degree of anonymity, as transactions are recorded on a public ledger but do not directly link users to their real-world identities. To purchase illicit goods or services, users deposit cryptocurrency into an escrow system or directly to the seller, and the cryptocurrency is held until the buyer confirms the satisfaction of the transaction. Significant technological innovations and trends have reshaped dark-web marketplaces over recent years. In 2026, many platforms have adopted decentralized architectures, reducing single points of failure that previously made them vulnerable to law enforcement takedowns. The Silk Road was a famous dark web marketplace where users could buy and sell goods and services anonymously.

Despite most darknet markets banning the sale of fentanyl in their terms of service, nearly all mainstream Western-facing markets have vendors that sell fentanyl-laced products. While it received a relatively small share of large retail purchases as shown in the previous chart, Abacus Market is one such example. Though many customers are concentrated in Australia, Abacus has vendors and customers around the world, including the United States. Cybercrime enablement represents flows from ransomware, stolen funds, malware, or fraud shops to darknet markets. TRM provides blockchain intelligence to help financial institutions, cryptocurrency businesses, and public agencies detect, investigate, and manage crypto-related fraud and financial crime. 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.

Frictions and Structural Risks

TorZon Market is a large, general‑purpose dark‑web marketplace that’s frequently cited in 2024–2025 roundups. It operates on Tor and, by 2025, is commonly reported as hosting tens of thousands of active listings. To make seller reputations more portable, TorZon supports imported, PGP‑signed reviews, and it accepts both Bitcoin and Monero.

This helps build a picture of marketplace activity without interacting with the platforms themselves. Participation in dark web marketplaces can lead to serious criminal charges, even if involvement seems limited. Law enforcement investigations often span years and rely on digital traces collected over time. Many marketplaces shut down suddenly due to exit scams, where administrators disappear with user funds.

Regional websites

In conclusion, the darknet ecosystem continues to evolve, driven by technological advancements and the growing demand for secure online trade. As these markets become more sophisticated, they offer users a reliable and efficient platform for conducting transactions, solidifying their position as a cornerstone of the digital economy. “Over the years some markets … developed a robust catalog of illicit services like money laundering, fiat offramping, and products that enable cyber-criminal activities like ransomware and malware attacks. One such sophisticated darknet market, Hydra, offered all that and more,” Chainalysis explained.

Law Enforcement Action Had Little Effect on Supply and Prices

Additionally, transactions are made with cryptocurrencies, mostly Bitcoin, which also provide anonymity to the transaction parties6,36. While the Bitcoin blockchain is publicly available on Bitcoin core37 or other third-party APIs such as Blockchain.com38, a market or a user can generate a new address for each transaction. To track the transactions of markets and users as entities, the data need to be pre-processed in order to map groups of addresses into entities. Dark markets are online platforms on the darknet where illegal goods and services are traded.

Cypher Marketplace

The CIA’s onion site allows users to securely report threats or suspicious activity, especially in regions where online surveillance is common. Its presence on the dark web also supports intelligence gathering and helps track cybercriminal activity. darknet markets links Onion sites, or dark web websites, are sites on the dark web that can typically only be accessed using special software like the Tor browser. These sites use “.onion” domains, which are made up of random letters and numbers up to 56 characters long.

Dark web websites: 10 Onion sites to explore

To analyse the connectivity of the whole ecosystem, i.e., how markets are connected with each other, we consider sellers and buyers that are simultaneously active on multiple platforms. In particular, multihomers that are sellers in multiple markets are multisellers, and similarly for buyers we have the multibuyers. Specifically, to be classified as a multiseller, a user must be classified as a seller in at least two markets simultaneously. The multihomers play a crucial role in the ecosystem because they act as edges between markets. While there may occasionally be multihomers who are active in several markets simultaneously (see Supplementary Information Section S3), multihomers predominantly operate in at most two markets throughout the period of observation. Hence we do not distinguish multisellers by the number of markets in which they operate.

By contrast, the English language ASAP market, the largest non-Russian darknet market, accounts for less than 10 percent of dark web sales. The marketplace’s operators appear to have disappeared with users’ cryptocurrency funds, marking another significant blow to the Western darknet ecosystem following the law enforcement seizure of Archetyp Market in June 2025. While not an onion site, Tor Metrics can provide a fascinating peek “under the hood” of the dark web. It tracks Tor user activity by region, showing trends in access and adoption without collecting personal data. These insights help researchers and privacy advocates understand where Tor is most relied upon, often highlighting global patterns in censorship, surveillance, and the demand for online anonymity. DuckDuckGo is a privacy-focused search engine that works as Tor browser’s primary search engine.

The enhanced anonymity and lack of centralized control over user funds make decentralized marketplaces an attractive alternative for dark web users. As regulatory scrutiny and law enforcement pressure continue to mount, the rise of decentralized platforms reflects a broader trend towards more secure and private transaction methods on the dark web. The Russian Market’s focus on fraud and cybercrime services makes it a significant player in the darknet market ecosystem. Its specialization and the variety of tools and data it offers have contributed to its sustained popularity among dark web users.

Nevertheless, due to their unregulated nature, DWMs exhibit behaviours not observed in regulated marketplaces. They offer anonymity to their users by using and developing specialized tools. DWMs are accessed through darknet browsers supporting the onion routing protocol (e.g., Tor), which provides anonymous communication connections35.

Threat actors may also manipulate old or publicly available data to generate hype and damage reputations. The arrest followed an extensive investigation by the Central Office for Combating Internet Crime (ZIT), which tracked the platform’s operations across multiple jurisdictions. Exploring the dark web can be eye-opening, but it’s also risky without the right protection. While the Tor browser boosts privacy, pairing it with a VPN adds a critical layer of security. Use Norton VPN to encrypt the data you send and receive and surf more anonymously. These aren’t distant problems—they are immediate, and they affect public safety, financial systems, and global cooperation.

By adopting a few straightforward rules and habits, you can make it more difficult for hackers to access your data and remove yourself from their line of sight. Unfortunately, the increasing availability of personal information on the Dark Web results in lower costs—and consequently, a higher likelihood—that your accounts will be compromised. This applies even when the information is needed for critical procedures, such as registering for Social Security or obtaining a new driver’s license.

These lists are regularly updated to reflect the latest trends, ensuring that traders can access the most secure and innovative markets. The emphasis on transparency and community feedback has further solidified the reputation of these platforms. Throughout the history of the darknet market ecosystem, at different turns one marketplace has typically played the dominant role. The last several years’ examples include Silk Road, AlphaBay, Wall Street Market, and Hydra, most recently. Historically, as law enforcement closed each dominant marketplace, a new leader emerged. We can see this pattern on the chart below, which shows the level of market share controlled by the dominant market of each epoch.

However, in April 2022, this site went offline after American and German federal government law enforcement agencies seized the website servers. It’s recommended not to use new alternative links, as they could just be planned exit scams. The vendors aren’t required to register or apply for a vendor account while using this platform. It ensures the buyer’s identity is kept hidden and accepts payments through cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and Monero. Moreover, the layers of encryption and the bounce of your data from node to node effectively mask your IP address, enabling online anonymity.

The platform also advertises user‑engagement features such as a raffle and paid account upgrades for expanded functionality. Experienced users typically prefer marketplaces with robust vendor rating systems, detailed feedback options, and transparent dispute resolution processes. Platforms known for consistently resolving issues and eliminating fraudulent vendors quickly gain credibility and user loyalty.

Established in 2022, WizardShop is one of the biggest data stores on the dark web, focusing mainly on carding and financial data. Predictive threat intelligence can help you stay ahead of emerging threats by forecasting what’s yet to come. In repressive regimes, darknets play a vital role in enabling free speech and access to uncensored information. Tools like Tor are used to bypass government-imposed firewalls and surveillance, ensuring open communication.

Government of Canada reporting confirms that traffickers use both the surface web and dark web to sell drugs delivered by mail or courier. The same reports highlight gaps in the national ability to measure the full scale of this activity. Journalists use the dark web to communicate with sources anonymously, and whistleblowers rely on it to share sensitive information without fear of retaliation.