ASAP Market is without doubt one of the biggest marketplaces in the scene right now. The market has grown tremendously in the last few months. Its growth has been steered by many factors, among them the recent exit scam of World Market. The retirement of CannaHome market has also contributed to the Market’s growth. Being in operation despite all these ups and downs is not usually an easy task. As such, Asap has encountered a constant series of DDoS attacks that has hampered the operations of the market on several occasions.
Asap Market Exit Scam Allegations
Users of the marketplace recently got concerned after claims of an exit scam speculated online. A user posted on Dread Forum claiming that withdrawals and deposits were not showing up in users’ accounts. For persons who understand the game, this is one of the clear signs that a market is yet to perform an exit scam. An exit scam is a scenario where a marketplace takes all user’s funds then shut down abruptly.
The post elicited mixed reactions as some other users also claimed that their withdrawals and deposits couldn’t show up. Under the post titled, ‘I’ve just had my btc deposit be confirmed and not appear on ASAP’. The user expressed his concerns about money not showing up in their accounts.
Claims
‘I’ve just had my btc deposit be confirmed and not appear on ASAP
Currently just sunk the last off my money over £300 into ASAP and it turned out to be a very bad decision not a phising link and the money has not appeared in my account looks to be an exit scam and ive just had the rest off my money robbed by the looks off it will keep this thread updated i have submitted a ticket.
Another user also claimed,
“withdrew Monero a few hours ago. gone
Had a vendor accept the order. It was made and shipped for 2 days . Woke up today and it was canceled. Placed a new order with someone else. This market is insanely buggy as I’m sure we all know. Had $45 in monero left over . Send it back to your wallet. Green banner said success, then crashed. There is nothing on he ASAP ledger saying withdraw. Nothing came in my wallet after hours.Any helpful info would be nice. This market gives me heartburn lol.”
One user Who Came in defense of Asap Said,
“It’s hard to give any market the benefit of the doubt when withdrawals seem to be having issues. Generally speaking asap has always come through and usually doesn’t respond until after the issue is resolved. I want to say ASAP is going to fix this given the administration’s stance on scammers but the issue seems to be widespread with users missing large deposits and no official response from the market.
Hoping asap gets on here and addresses the issue soon, that would at least let everyone know they are officially aware of the problem and actively working to fix it.
It’s too soon to panic, just be patient. Worrying isn’t going to change the outcome.”
Panic Mode
At times, such claims can also be linked to phishing links. But Asap’s issue was a bit different, and I guess that’s why many users were concerned. Even if you leave the link issue, all transactions that had been made in the last few days didn’t show up. This means there was actually a problem with the site. And many users even confirmed they’ve been using the same link over and over. So the Asap Market team had to respond because this was raising eyebrows.
It took some time, but he finally reached out and clarified the issue on Dread forum. Under a post titled ‘The one fucking transaction caused this shit-show‘ he claimed that only one transaction of a user which didn’t proceed properly had led to all these. Further, he added that the transaction id was okay, but for some unknown reason, the transaction didn’t just proceed. He however said that all the problems had been fixed and that all transactions had been processed. Dread Forum administrator HugBunter confirmed the statement.
HugBunter’s Confirms Transactions Processed
“Edid, Vendors reporting withdrawals all received now for both BTC and XMR.
Edit edit: Spoke with the Admin, apparently he’s getting all payments processed now. If anyone received their withdrawal, make sure to respond to my comment.
Edit: I’ve now had multiple vendors confirm they are missing somewhat large withdrawals. With there also being comments that small withdrawals have been successful, it is not a good look. I’m going to hold off on making this an announcement post with it already being at the top of the front page. If the admin doesn’t respond to me or this isn’t resolved then I’ll make sure it is sticky for complete visibility.
With there being mixed reports here, can any established vendors chime in with their experience? I’m trying to reach Admins to check what is going on.”
ASAP Market admin full announcement on the issue
“Howdy troops
As of writing the deposit and withdrawal issue has been fixed. If you’re still missing your coins, don’t forget to check your market wallet. It might have been refunded to you. You should try again. I want to thank everyone who trusted in us and I also want to thank everyone who raised voices about it. Every market will tell you to trust them but if a market is exitscamming and there are some clear signs, you must warn the community about it. Don’t let any exit scamming market taking your hard earned capital. Generally, markets exitscam during such events and some naive users are tricked by last minute promises. We never intend to do anything like that. But we don’t encourage anyone to trust anyone on darknet, even us.
How this happened
For the last few days we have been ignoring tickets about missing deposits. 80% of such tickets are created by phished users, rest 20% are either delayed transactions or double spend issues. We manually approve double spend issues, that’s why we stopped bothering about such tickets. However, we found some legit issues, once such is mentioned by /u/m4y4r. The transaction id was legit but for some weird reasons it failed. We scanned the network to check if there are more such transactions.
Apparently, there were none but this particular transaction was still missing. We had to re-synchronize xmr nodes and this caused the most recent issue faced by our users. We deeply apologize for it, however, its fixed now. Better late than never. All transactions are successful. On a funny note, I want to scold that particular user with missing deposit which caused all this issue. Ask vendors about their heatbeats due to this one fucking transaction. On the same note, I want to request our buyer to be patient about tickets and disputes. We attend all tickets and disputes but sometimes some tickets and disputes are missed. Missed tickets are attended in second rounds.
Why we distributed 750 alt mirrors on Asap Market
Because of this fucking transaction. We were working to understand the attack and working on mitigating it. At the same time, we noticed this transaction. We thought we can just find it but we were wrong. It was connected to API but wasn’t picked by the system. Very weird. When we tried to fix it, we noticed pending withdrawals, hence, we decided to introduce 750 alt mirrors, as long as this issue is resolved. We can’t work on both issues simultaneously. I hope these alt mirrors are helpful and you could use one of these to access the market during this DDOS. We will be working with Paris to find a solution to this new kind of DDOS attack.
Thank you.
Le Chacal “
Conclusion And Final Thought
The issue has since been solved after HugBunter’s involvement. It’s up and working and Asap is once again a safe market to shop on. But it’s common knowledge that you be very careful when it comes to any deal on the dark web. Players should refrain from keeping large amounts of money on their wallets at any given time. Any darknet marketplace has the ability to exit scams and you’ll have nothing to do about it. So always take caution. Also, your identity should be the last thing you reveal to anybody along these streets. Simply, do not trust anybody over here.
Cops are just on standby waiting for you to make that slight mistake then they’re on your doorstep the next minute. So it’s up to you. Also, remember the information we give on this side is for learning purposes. We’re not responsible for any actions undertaken as a result of the information obtained herein. Otherwise happy grinding.