[Complaint/Warning] Be careful with Nucleus

Nucleus is the second, primed competitor besides Agora to re-position itself on the podium of dark market stardom. But Nucleus has a lot of troubling issues that I think need to be questioned. It will and has received a large proportion of Evolution vendor and customer migration. I think people need to exercise extreme care when using Nucleus. This is not an invested or personal attack on Nucelus, but it's by far the shadiest marketplace on the DNM ladder since Evolution. And here's my reasoning...

3 good reasons to be careful with Nucleus

Number 1.

**Intense shilling.** 

The advertisement for Nucleus on DeepDotWeb is consistently padded with reviews that are obviously posted by the administrators of Nucleus. This has been a committed campaign to deceive users since Nucleus' conception. The shilling is so obvious that DeepDot has attached a warning to Nucleus regarding the excessive and persistent posting of fake reviews. The shilling also stretches to Reddit and onion based discussion forums. Nucleus is followed by a large crowd of fanatical supporters who are make unnatural and sometimes hysterical posts that are favorable to Nucleus. A market is expected to advertise, but doing so through deceptive methods shows signs of desperation and greed.

Number 2.

**Inability to ban scammers.** 

The word inability could be replaced with unwillingness here because both are accurate. Nucleus has shown that it is comfortable allowing proven FE scammers to continue to conduct scams. Vendors that are imitating real vendors appear to still be vending on Nucleus with FE requirements, even when reported. Nucleus has recognized that fake vendors are rampant and attempted shift blame and dissuade user complaints resulting from scams, but the vendors remain active, so one has to consider who is profiting from allowing obvious FE scammers to remain. Nucleus has publicly claimed that the scams are a consequence of FE and Nucleus will therefore not accept responsibility for them. Source: Nucleus' Official Reddit account. It has been alleged that members of their support staff are vendors, and are scamming Bitcoin from winning disputes. This is not one or two allegations, but a truck load. Several people report being ripped off by the Nucleus support staff, not receiving a response or being ignored. There are outright reports of Nucleus vendors, even ones with reputations and history, being scammed when their Bitcoin balances are showing some considerable volume. A quick look on the Nucleus threads on The Hub will show numerous allegations of Nucleus purporting to have scammed its vendors. And finally, after logging into my 2-3 month old Nucleus account to see if the 0.1 BTC test deposit was still sitting safely in my wallet, alas, it wasn't. This only compounded my concerns and had it not been for that, I likely would not have posted this thread.

Vendor HonestCocaine reports to have been scammed by Nucleus. Multiple users also stating that their deposits never arrived on Nucleus or that Bitcoins disappeared from their accounts. The allegations are widespread by many different users and have regularly been posted since Nucleus started. Source: The Hub.

Number 3.

**Evolution similarities with UI.** 

Now I'm not going to claim these are the words of Angel Gabriel herself but a number of people have raised concerns about the strong similarities between Nucleus and Evolution. It appears to have very similar structural similarities but does have definite cosmetic changes.

This site looks exactly as Evolution. Only lavout changed a LITTLE bit. 5000 Listings in one or 2 month. Growing fast is not healthy. It is a nice Scam Operation, my word. Same big fraud-sellers as everytime. Honest sellers and buyers open your eyes and go to another market but not here. Go to markets that have more experience than this new one. I promise it will end up in a big scam.

looks for me exactly like evolution, just a little bit updated. and no vendor fee at all. must be a place for scammers and at the end the whole marketplace will scam you all. be aware guys!

It seems to be a modern version of evo, the forum is very suspicions. Hell no I don't want to lose my money again! To these thieves!!!

This market looks exactly like Evo... is this ok? hi everyone. after evo falling, ive been looking for a new market. well i need to say, that this nucleus market, and forum, are built exactly to the bullseye like evolution market. does this arouse suspicion? is there anyway to make sure its not the same folks trying to pull one on us again?

SCAM SITE. The support is a mafia. i understand why they don't do fees for vendors haha. Some guys from the support of nucleus are vendors, and they are scamming on winning disputes. you can buy little things on nucleus, like pornsite or piece of weed, but never spend a lot of money on nucleus.

A few of the most notable allegations.


Final words

Nucleus has become, and will continue to become one of the largest dark net markets. It is impossibly fast, and will use that traction to take the edge on Agora, combined with the swift UI that everyone loved on Evolution. The reason the centralized explosion on Evo was so effective was become vendors all dived into the next biggest thing and it gobbled them up simultaneously. I don't think the Nucleus administrators have administered much discretion of care with handling their increased usage. This says to me that these operators have questionable intentions, and may not plan to be running markets for a long time. I don't care for greed, and when I look at Nucleus I see it loud and clear.

Take this as FUD. I simply wish people to take care when using Nucleus. If it is struggling at this stage then the future does not look good. I think that the operator's probability to exit scam is high, if not astronomically high. The rampant FE on Nucleus, thus widespread scamming, shady operating practices by the support, and a daily increasing amount of allegations of impropriety is all coming together to form a very clear picture.

Take care /r/dnm


Comments


[17 Points] BrotherMidas:

I had one deposit that didn't show up. The reports of problems like these are getting buried quick on the forums which are poorly monitored themselves.

The problem with my deposit seemed to be with depositing to an address I was already sending a deposit. Definitely make sure you get a new address for every transaction.


[6 Points] None:

[deleted]


[4 Points] Axaq:

Everything here, I completely agree with other than the interface, I haven't checked, but it is most likely using the Bootstrap framework, similarly to Evolution, c9, Tom Market, Tor Escrow, Underground Market etc etc. The reason I think this without checking is the elements seem to be styled characteristically like that of Bootstrap styles. I have doubted the framework itself in the past as a Web Designer and wouldn't personally use it, as I find it a lot nicer and more creative to come up with your own unique design from scratch, however it is good to see that Market developers are coming to use this as a sort of standard, much better than the older Markets with out of date designs, i.e BMR.


[2 Points] theevoinsider:

Nucleus is terribly reviewed on DDW and there is no warning anywhere

The forum uses default fluxbb, that is where the similarity ends

Anyone who thinks Verto and Kimble are gonna put time and effort into setup another site to scam instead of concentrating their efforts of evading any repercussions and successfully cashing out must be currently wrapping tin foil around their head


[4 Points] None:

We do not know if any of the following is fact, but we have strong reason to believe Nucelus is run by Verto. A large vendor who messaged me has been given proof the market was created and currently being run by Verto and his staff. Including Kalashnikov and other known close friends to Verto. This vendor is working on putting together something which he will present to the community as proof of this all.

Also support on the site uses BPCG IGOLDER on the clearnet to unsafely encrypt messages.

Also support used the evolution password reset string method when nucleus was trying to verify a vendors ID. The string that is used to change a password on an account with 2FA enabled on Evolution. The question is how could they have used this? The only people who would use this method are the only ones that have used it in the past, Verto and Kimble.

We have gone on vacation on Nucleus currently, we will update the community on what our next plan of action ASAP.


[5 Points] assnapken:

Not only all the problems stated above but I'd like to add one more beware of how easily it is for a vendor to scam.

They have a set delivery time. I used it to order a couple of grams of weed with leftover bitcoin and to try out nucleus market. Little did I know that they estimated delivery time of 4 days was how long you had to dispute the order.

The four day delivery time came and passed and I received nothing. I gave it a full 7 days before I logged back in to complain you know because of usps being slow some times.

When I logged back on I noticed that my escrow had already been released to the vendor. I messaged the vendor twice and got no response. Then I messaged admin and he told me in his broken english that if I didn't dispute within the 4 day delivery time funds get released.

Who in there right mind would think to dispute after only 4 days. I've had tons of packages take anywhere from 5-12 days. Admin was really a prick about the whole thing.

If I had researched closer I would have been able to tell that all the vendors feedbacks were shills from himself or the admin that was in on it.

I wouldn't touch nucleus with a ten foot pole. Blackbank on the other hand has been wonderful so far. I'm gonna start another nucleus complaint thread with this is in it. Because people need to know what they are getting into. I really hope good vendors don't go there.


[3 Points] TioTake:

  1. The shilling doesn't bother me very much since Nucleus, when Evo was around and with Agora still around, Nucleus wasn't getting much business so... shilling happens. It's marketing as I see it.

  2. I'm out of the loop when it comes to Nucleus allowing vendors to scam customers but I have read a some complaints. The same complaints can be said about other markets too, though. If Nucleus does indeed allow vendors to scam customers maybe it's because they're a small market and want to keep their current vendors happy. If Nucleus gets bigger (and there are more vendors there now) they'll either stop siding with vendors all the time to avoid customer complaints which will kill the market or they'll step up and start banning vendors. As far as you missing bitcoin, that is concerning. Whether you left your coins there for 2 weeks or 2-3 months like you said it should have stayed there. I'm assuming the Nucleus staff took it and that's a big red flag.

  3. Nucleus appearing like Evolution... I don't see enough similarities to be worried about that.

My complaints: First off I've ordered off of Nucleus before and things went smoothly. My main complaint is that the site has some bugs. Last time I checked Nucleus showed zero listings in their "Erotica" and "Digital Goods" categories but I know for a fact that I've come across some porn sites and hacked account listings. But their Categories section shows zero listings for them. That's a pretty big oversight by the owners in my opinion.

Also, after hearing some rumors about Nucleus being a little shady and having ordered from them before I contacted support to ask them if they could nuke my account. All transactions, all PM's, my username of course, and I don't remember what else but basically I asked them to wipe me off the site completely. They told me okay and that it would take 3 days. That was weeks ago and I can still access my account.

With Evo gone Nucleus is going to step up their game and I'd give them a month or so to see some changes over there. If those changes don't happen soon... they'll be gone after a while. That's what I think.


[2 Points] deepdot:

Intense shilling.

That is correct, i have warned them before, i have also listed a warning on their listing page about constant shilling (thats regardless of their comments,forum and posting bad reviews of other markets shilling attempts) and later i just deleted their reviews.


[2 Points] Newthrowaway63:

Please see my comment to the other recent poster warning of the flaws of Nucleus, I very well may lose a good chunk of money on an order from a vendor using escrow (what I thought I was ordering with) but selling in a category that I was just supposed to know was all FE (not what I would've ordered with). I got an order that immediately finalized after it was (hopefully but we'll see) sent. It was my fault, I should've known that obscure rule unique to only that market, so I can only blame myself, but for god's sake nucleus one tiny little safeguard to alert me of that would've saved me a nice bit of money and given nucleus a long term customer. You'd think a smaller market would work harder to compete with the big boy Agora, and offer incentives for customers to try them out. Instead they lose future revenue by losing customers that made a completely understandable and expected mistake (it's not like I was stupid and just went and FE'ed). Things like that leave a bad first impression of a market to which I went out of my way to give a chance. Sometimes it's just better I guess to go to good old reliable Walmart instead of trying the local shop down the block.


[1 Points] None:

[deleted]


[1 Points] None:

[deleted]


[1 Points] None:

So as of now, all that's good are Agora and BlackBank?


[1 Points] xeddmc:

The UI is similar to Sheep's as well. I believe it's twitter bootstrap?


[1 Points] lesuu:

I must confirm. [Complaint/Warning] Nucleus < Grams < Evolutuion = scamm (fbi) services.

The logical conclusion, after two unsuccessful transactions on Nucleus. I choose different vendors with not a lot of deals, but with "positive feedback on EVO" seeing on GRAMS. I use PGP to verify vendor and make deal. Recieve nothing, fake vendors not answer. I think, GRAMS shows fake feedback and made from one team, that made EVO and after scam exit - Nucleus. Beware


[0 Points] theseeker01:

Hmm the UI part

just like sheep had a good ui and then TorMarketplace

Is this gonna be the next TMP?


[0 Points] theseeker01:

http://www.reddit.com/r/NucleusMarket/new/

look at the latest posts people haven't been getting their coin in after 17 confirmations and 12+ hours.