The Enormous Unnoticed Vulnerability of the Current Scene

So I've been pretty absent from the sub for awhile but this issue has been playing on my mind a lot and it's getting to the point that I can't believe it has gone unnoticed for so long.

 

For those of you who haven't been around long enough to experience the sexy beast of a market that Agora was, let me preface this topic with the history of it's closing.

 

Agora replaced Evolution after it's exit and quickly became the largest and most popular market by a considerable margin. For a good while, things were well and stable with the DNM scene and we prospered. This was pretty short lived, though, when Agora went offline and there was a bit of a silent panic among buyers and vendors who needed a nez market HQ. The thing that saved the DNM scene when Agora went offline was the surplus of medium-sized "plan B" markets that existed at the time. We had markets like Blackbank, Nucleus, Abraxas, and Alphabay to pick up the slack. These markets weren't nearly the size of Agora but many vendors were spread across these markets and they all had decent customer bases, layouts, reputation.

 

Soon thereafter, these markets began to exit scam. Blackbank went down, then Nucleus, Abraxas, and suddenly we were left with Alphabay. There were a few other small markets but the biggest of which was DHL. This is still true today as Alphabay dominates in terms of market popularity and has stepped up as a new-age Agora. Now, we get to the big issue--there are almost no viable "plan B markets" today. If Alphabay was to exit or go down, we would be royally screwed.

 

The medium-sized markets that exist today are Dream, Outlaw, Hansa, and DHL. You can weed almost all of these out as viable options as safe haven marketplaces for various reasons. Dream is untrustable. I would never in my life perform a transaction through Dream even at a 50% off price. If you need to see why, just check the Superlist. Outlaw and Hansa do not have the reputation or resources to endure a mass migration in case of an Alphabay exit. The same thing that happened with the fall of Agora would happen again: one or two of these markets will rise up as a sort of savior, see a huge revenue increase, and exit with the funds. You can be skeptical about this claiming admins would be smart enough to stay in for the long haul, but the fact is the volatility of these markets is not worth the long haul 90% of the time. Admins know this. They will cash in and bail out.

 

This brings us to DHL being my favorite as the Alphabay predecessor but it also could not handle a mass migration. Allowing a huge amount of non-reputable buyers and vendors completely undermines the point of the DHL market. If it decided to accept new buyers and vendors again, the direction of the market would have to shift entirely and it would likely be a timely process. I just don't see DHL completely switching gears like that.

 

I've drawn this out enough so I'll wrap it up. I have been involved in this community for a good while now--along with many of you. Do not let yourselves forget how important market variety is. Alphabay could exit or be shut down at any time and we have no means of recovering from that contingency. I do not have the means of actually taking any steps to resolve this myself other than trying to shed some light on the subject, but I will say if there was ever an opportunity for an emerging market to succeed, it's now. A lot of you might think this is dramatic and Alphabay is safe or it doesn't make sense to exit, but the fact is you just never know.

 

I marked this as a discussion so let's talk about it. What do you guys think? How big is this problem? What input can you share? Let's keep this whole DNM thing going strong!

Edit: Okay, let me clarify part of a point I'm making here. I see a lot of people saying "with demand there is supply." Yes, this is true with legal, regulated market systems. However these markets are only created illegally. This adds an element of riskk. Supply, demand, and risk. These markets can make huge amounts of cash within minuscule margins of time through mass migration. When these markets hit that monetary goal and thank to themselves, "we have X-million now, it's not worth the risk to stay up when I'm already this rich is when exit scams come. Yes, you can hope that a market does not hit that point at which they think there is not enough reward for the risk--but my entire point is that that point will be reached even faster by these markets because of the small pool we have to choose from, driving a huge amount of Alphabay's traffic towards one or two main markets. These two markets will triple, quadruple--even more--over the course of a couple of weeks. This is a huge problem for us as customers! The escrow balance on these sites will be huge and will probably equal what the market can make on commissions over the next few years. Why would an admin keep the site live when they've made X-million in two weeks which is equal to what they'll make in their entire future lifetime and have to worry about the huge risk increase of being the current biggest market? In my opinion, it seems like so many of you are hopeful that a new market will fill the void but you can't trust that! Nine times out of ten, people will cash out quickly instead of investing in the long haul with that amount of risk.


Comments


[49 Points] trappy_AB:

please call your local politican and request alphabay to be legalized and we will no longer fear having our offices raided


[19 Points] Seraphim_X:

You never mentioned Outlaw. They were around longer than all of them. Dream is okay. DHL is really nice too. Hansa is really stepping up also. Not everyone clings to the teet of AB like a malnourished stray cat. Never become attached to any market. Shop on all of them. We make the markets what they are. Where there is demand, you will find a supply.

Just pretend, They are all about to exit scam, some just take longer than others.


[9 Points] DarkKnight_1111:

Sadly, the retard is correct. If AB were to go down we would be so scatterbrained klusterfucked we wouldnt know up from down, and the sobriety, dont even get me started on the sobriety...


[8 Points] didYOUtryTOeat:

Ok. IMO Alpha-Bay is not going anywhere, and honestly I think in 10 years they will still be running. Seriously. They are perched up somewhere in Russia, likely protected by Mafia(who have politicians wrapped around their fingers) they likely have multiple multiple clones of the site ready to dispatch in the event a server is compromised. What you SEE on the front end (Tumbing withdrawal, Autoshop, partial FE, Contracts, etc...) is half of what they have done on the backend, most of which is likely to make sure that if some shit hits the fan they're back within a couple hours ;-)

Never seen anything like it before, Evo, Agora, blackbank, Oasis, ABraxxas, whatever whatever none have been so well coded and deployed as Alpha-Bay has been. AND they KEEP adding cool features like Monero Support ETC... Think about it. You make a market. Work fucking hard to get people to trust it, few months of nothing happeneing, slowly vendors start opening. Buyers take longer to follow. But when MEM and Abraxxas Exited, the buyer had no other viable place to go, but Alpha-Bay it really is a rather 'lucky' situation to be in.

BUT they didnt stop there. Nope getting many buyer was not enough for them, They needed to be the best. So they added these features and plug-ins like the API and such to make it easier for vendors to process orders and for buyers to purchase items.

I can speak for myself, I can to DNM to get product I couldn't get anywhere else. I was tired of jamming milk in my nose, or eating BITTER as fuck tabs, or Methyolne sold as MDMA. IMO DNM serve this purpose for everyone and anyone indiscriminately. You, me, JoeBlow, Who'sHisFace, anyone should have the right to access DNM if they choose to consume something that is otherwise blackmarket. It is safe. and Better. Less violent.

SO DHL IMO is a pathetic attempt at a marketplace with ZERO 'real' implications (making drug usage safer for all) becuase you need to be in this pertentious 'greater than thou' crowd to get a Buggie 'Invite' So I can spend money with one of their "Extra super duper cool" vendors who they treat like shit. NO THANKS. DHL IMO should stop giving out invites and just stay the same size. Not to mention I've been hearing "DHL is coming out of Beta" for the past 6 months. Shit still looks exactly the fucking same. Beta = Bullshit.

SO your left with a few options, More technical users HANSA!! Otherwise. Alpha-Bay FTW!


[6 Points] tshknt:

red herring - bitcoin is the larger single point of failure


[3 Points] None:

[deleted]


[3 Points] None:

Economy's always find a way. Btw, multisig is the future and I don't need to explain why.


[3 Points] GNAR-TheBarGoblin:

Keep calm bud, when the demand screams the supply comes ;-) You can bet on that.


[2 Points] nomorebullshittt:

The medium-sized markets that exist today are Dream, Outlaw, Hansa, and DHL

And Valhalla


[2 Points] FuzzerPupper:

Even if Alphabay is dead tomorrow, some market will step up. After all who thought Alphabay was gonna be the Champion after Agora?


[2 Points] Selectivescammer1:

When a vacuum is created it will be filled by another market. One of those mentioned or a new one.

Too much money to be made that someone will stand up out of the pack and fill the vacuum created by the loss of say a big market like Alphabay. There will be confusion and a period of choas but order will come again.

This seems to be the pattern on the darknet markets. We all want a couple of big consistent marketplaces, vendors and buyers alike, so i sincerley hope Alphabay sticks around, and if true that they are based in Russia, then the DEA can't touch them...i always wondered why they had that Russian translator request in the support function, makes sense now.


[2 Points] DerkNatMerkats:

What would Hansa exit with


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[1 Points] coffeencreme:

You're right, and it goes back even further than that. Back to when SR1 was seized, we still had BMR. Operation Onymous, and enough survived that we could carry on. Evo went, as you said we had Agora.

There isn't a big plan B in that form I agree with you there. But at the same time, what would happen is the AB refugees would flock into Oasis, Outlaw etc. and the next market would be the one that everyone used, the same as has always happened.

My big concern is that these smaller markets would be able to cope with the increased traffic and transactions that an event like this would bring. If not, we would be screwed.


[1 Points] None:

[deleted]


[1 Points] SecondChanceUsername:

So what current plan B MP does OP suggest we throw in our to with? Cause if you asked most people here they would probably say Dream, and ideally we should be migrating to Hansa.


[1 Points] asdfrewq15:

Dude... CGMC. Probably the best market right now


[1 Points] chFDevin:

If Alphabay were to exit, Hansa would undoubtedly rise.


[1 Points] 420NSWGreat:

DreamMarket is Australia's backup. We agreed on it as a community when we migrated markets.

We all know AlphaBay is going to exit scam and make a tonne by dumping Monero at the same time. That is the long term plan, I don't see a reason for them to do it until they're content to go live a life of comfort away from the stress of a market. AlphaBay may do it a more corporate way to keep face, close the market down without an exit scam.. days after they dump Monero. Either way, they going to be winners of the chicken dinner.

Using a market is a risk of the trade and one market will always be larger than the rest.

I don't understand what you are attempting to achieve here, they're plenty of markets to use if you wanted to mitigate orders around different escrows. Most commercial sized vendors have a private store or take direct deals.


[1 Points] ACrafty:

I think the entire point of Hansa's multi-sig escrow is to prevent the market from being able to exit with the funds.