Right now its one of the largest markets and it is up much more than agora (94.64% uptime as of posting). Alphabay is also always improving with user recommendations. It was one of the few markets to remain up during the heavy DDOSing. It also is the only market that i know of that has a partial escrow service, and autoshop ( i dont use that though). The best part about Alphabay is the customer service. if you need help at all you just click to go to the forum and go to the help desk where alpha02 or one of his mods will be able to help you he has an extremely fast response time. I have never received a message in less than 24hrs so far. and if you post while hes on there's a fast response. INCOMING WALL OF TEXT!
i was tricked and alpha helped me out. WARNING: ALL THIS HAPPENED BECAUSE I DID NOT CHECK THE MARKET NEWS POST AND SEE THE PHISHING WARNINGS my personal experience with alpha02: i was tricked and alpha helped me out. Due to the markets being DDOSed and the bitcoin stress tests my deposits was taking longer than usual. and i had to make a purchase so i was getting anxious. i hopped on the forum went to the help desk and posted my problem and within 2 minutes i recieved a response via pm within 2 minutes from an account that said it was alpha02 but the first letter was acrylic and it being my first time on the server i didnt realise that his name wasnt red and didnt say Administrator & Owner and staff member underneath his name on top of the account being created on MAY 21st!(im an idiot right?) anyway he says he checked the blockchain and everything went through so i wait a bit and then say its still not deposited and he says he will push it through manually but it will take and hour and he asks me to change my password and to disable my 2FA authentication(RED FLAG!)i was still convinced he was the market admin and so like an idiot i agreed. After a half hour he messaged me asking to confirm my pin and bit transferred to make sure im the same user,i give it to him then dont here back for awhile i finally regain control of my account and i see that the my bitcoin used to purchase PORN ACCOUNTS! i immediately freaked out and got back on the help desk and started posting my problem. the real aplha02 quickly stepped in to solve everything and he deposited my bitcoin to my acount and reset my password and pin so i could get on. i immediately got on and changed everything to kick the scammer out before he did anything else. all of the conversations can be viewed in the following links: http://pwoah7foa6au2pul.onion/forum/index.php?threads/incoret-balance.8406/#post-68943 http://pwoah7foa6au2pul.onion/forum/index.php?threads/scammer-dispute.8419/#post-68574 http://pwoah7foa6au2pul.onion/forum/index.php?threads/deposit-issue2.8337/#post-68081 http://pwoah7foa6au2pul.onion/forum/index.php?threads/cant-log-in.8397/#post-68405
if alpha02 wanted to he could have taken all of my bitcoin and just said i was and idiot and the scammer took it all, but he was nice and professional about the entire thing. i can personally vouch that he will not selectively scam for btc like some markets we know of and he will actually respond and treat you like a person. i see people on here degrading him and his market constantly for being a carder, but hes really a great administrator who has a quality market dont judge a book by its cover. shoutout to /u/alpha02
EDIT: not the 2nd largest but still a very large market
The search and browse features really suck on alpha.