Below is a post that I made in another sub. I'm curious to know what people's thoughts on this are:
I think one of the main problems with the DNM is that success breeds failure and there is a self-limiting factor when it comes to quality vendors.
LE seems to mostly spend resources on busting the bigger, more popular vendors. A vendor becomes big/popular when they sell for a reasonable price and are reliable. Positive reviews stem from receiving quality product at a reasonable price in an expected time frame. This keeps shitty vendors small and brings heat on larger vendors.
If you look at some of the busts over the last 12 months, you will notice many of the top vendors for a given product have gotten popped. This creates an incentive for other successful vendors to exit scam and try to exit the game with money and freedom. Market exit scams just perpetuate this trend.
So what's left? Shitty vendors and a user base that trusts no one. Thus markets and vendors stay small with quality and quantity becoming rare. Throw in the hassle of learning opsec and obtaining btc, wait times, and prices that don't incentivize users (for anything besides MDMA, LSD and obscure products) and you have the current state of the market - fragmented, distrustful, small, and unreliable. It's a shame.
It's better not to think of it like this. Life itself acts in this way, when trees grow old and die, new trees sprout from them, just as smaller vendors replace larger vendors who have left. There will never be a time when these markets are completely stable, with the same set of vendors running everything. While big vendors often have the best prices, this isn't always the case. The great thing about these markets is everyone has a chance. If you have better prices than the next guy, then you have a pretty good shot at success. The markets aren't in a state of despair, they're in a state of development. Things will get better :)