As Alphabay and its ilk ended in 2017, a new darknet market grew in popularity. The Abacus market, formerly named Alphabet, boasts 21,000 listings in its inventory. How did this market become so popular recently?
Some attribute its growth to the decreasing availability of other darknet markets, while others say that it’s due to the increasing sophistication of the transactions made on Abacus. This article shows what makes Abacus so popular and what its users are buying.
Abacus Market: An Overview
The Abacus market, which launched as AlphaBet in early 2020, rebranded itself as Abacus to avoid any confusion after the darknet market giant “Alphabay” was back in action. The site now possesses more than 22,000 listings, including a vast number of listings for controlled substances. In addition to it, there are also a sizable amount of digital items available at your disposal.
However, the signing up procedure is a bit complex, but that doesn’t outshine the number of features this market offers compared to its competitors.
Abacus has made some significant changes in its website layout which are pretty influenced by its original namesake, “Alphabay”. However, the administration claims that the website has been coded from scratch and describes it as “the most friendly and intuitive layout that the darknet has ever seen.”
There’s no denying the fact that the Abacus layout resembles the Alphabay. Still, it comes with some advanced features such as support of XMR and BTC multisig transactions and the capacity to distinguish between different levels of Finalize Early (100%, 75%, 50%, and 25% of payment FE’d upon delivery).
As far as we know, aside from barring fentanyl and the other blocked items, Abacus is a liberal marketplace concerning what they allow to be listed. They are one of the last mainstream markets to feature a large assortment of fraudulent data, including personal information, credit cards, and many other data dumps. In addition to this, the market also claims to have the support that is available 24/7.
Abacus: Early Days
Taking inspiration from Ross Ulbricht’s Silk Road and Alphabay, the Abacus administrator wanted to create an intuitive and secure platform.
During the abacus launch, they explained this “Excited and convinced with Ross’ libertarian economic theory, which will be our guide for this great and long project, and in love with alpha02’s intuitive interface, we decided to bring live the AlphaBay’s layout with some improvements with the name of Abacus Market. We do not want to be another market; time will prove it. We worked hard to code from scratch a complete platform with high standards. Over time, we will start implementing more unique features”.
At that time, Abacus merely had 2500 listings in their vault with plenty of bugs that needed to be looked upon. Although, the market did well in its initial days due to the crackdown on various markets at that time.
Reasons why Abacus Market Emerged as a Darknet Market
Introduction of Aegis
This was one of the long-time features that the team of Abacus was working upon. Aegis is a search engine and an encyclopaedia oriented on the field of drugs. The initial inspiration behind the project was to collect and document all the theories and practices in the context of drug use in a comprehensive fashion, as well as provide users with the means to easily and quickly find the required information.
Opsec and Privacy
Abacus emphasises keeping your login information safe and helping you keep your data secure. It has a clean logging function and enforces PGP encryption. In addition, using mnemonic passcodes for security, they have an OPSEC and security architecture that is more impressive than other darknet markets. Furthermore, the marketplace uses 2FA to log into their accounts.
Payments with Monero and BTC Multisig
Monero is a cryptocurrency that focuses on privacy and security. A network of nodes verifies transactions before being added to the blockchain. This makes it more difficult for someone to track your transactions and create an illegitimate profit.
Additionally, Monero uses ring signatures to obscure the transaction’s sender, recipient, and amount. This helps protect against third-party theft and makes it difficult for criminals to earn money from scams or illicit activities. Finally, Monero utilises stealth addresses which make it impossible for anyone to know a user’s real identity.
The support of multisignature also ensures users that the vendor may not scam them, and in addition, it also decreases the risk of the market performing an exit scam.
Competitive Pricing
With more than 25,000 listings on board, the market is constantly expanding, which means that there is always more for buyers and sellers to choose from. More vendors are willing to sell their products at a lower price to compete with each other.
Additionally, the Abacus Market has a higher concentration of quality products than most darknets, which may also contribute to its lower prices.
Additionally, many of the products are rare or unique, so there is a higher demand for them than usual. Because this market operates decentralised, buyers and sellers can trade without fear of retaliation or excessive regulation.
Payments with Monero and BTC Multisig
Monero is a cryptocurrency that focuses on privacy and security. A network of nodes verifies transactions before being added to the blockchain. This makes it more difficult for someone to track your transactions and create an illegitimate profit.
Additionally, Monero uses ring signatures to obscure the transaction’s sender, recipient, and amount. This helps protect against third-party theft and makes it difficult for criminals to earn money from scams or illicit activities. Finally, Monero utilises stealth addresses which make it impossible for anyone to know a user’s real identity.
The support of multisignature also ensures users that the vendor may not scam them, and in addition, it also decreases the risk of the market performing an exit scam.
Great Vendor Policies
One of the reasons why Abacus got big in recent months is due to their vendor policies, which required no bonds to be paid for reputable vendors with prior experience in markets like World and ToRRez.
However, Keeping the commission fees to 5% and giving 10% of each successful purchase a referred buyer makes and 20% of each successful sale a referred vendor performs on the market was another factor to play an essential role in bringing reputable vendors on the market.
The marketplace gives vendors various opportunities and options to establish their shops how they wish. Letting the vendors customise escrow times and cancellation policies, taking many different payment types and even allowing them to mix like 50% FE 50% Escrow.
Bug Bounty Program
Bug bounty programs are becoming increasingly popular among many darknet markets to increase security and protect user data. Abacus offered an incentive for researchers to find vulnerabilities in darknet systems and help ensure those systems are secure. This shows their dedication to improving their system for a smooth user experience.
On-Site Mixer
Since no mixer is integrated into the website, Abacus partnered with Kilos mixer. You can easily find this option on the deposit/withdrawal page. This feature allows you to withdraw deposited funds to the mixer and then from the mixer to the wallet. The mixer “cleanses” your funds by washing them with Monero, making the whole procedure remain anonymous.
Several Anti-Phishing Measures
The market has been the victim of DDoS attacks lately and even went down for a month back in April. Though the administrators worked way hard to bring the system back on its feet, and quite well, they succeeded.
PGP-signed deposit addresses can be used, and there is a choice to omit the QR code and generate an encrypted, signed message address with your PGP (obviously, you need to include your PGP key to your account before you add it). However, this is an optional choice, but administrators recommended everyone to use this feature, especially if you are not PGP verifying the address you are using.
Scraped The Old Abacus Captcha
In addition to taking inspiration from the design template of renowned markets, Abacus had some problems that were driving customers away from the market. The CAPTCHA was unforgiving and difficult to pass.
Abacus had different plans to introduce a new captcha on the market. However, the utilisation of deCaptcha on the dread for its easy process inspired market administrators to present it to the Abacus.
Some Additional Features that Made the Market Stand Out From its Competitors
- The most flexible market with respect to managing self-cancel, auto-cancel, and auto-finalise times (always between a minimum and a maximum period).
- An adaptive layout is available for all visitors with an adjustable dark mode.
- Vendors are allowed to import stats from the markets they previously worked in
- Advanced Search Function simplifies finding vendors and products you’re specifically looking for.
- Pages are designed to direct vendors to customers quickly and efficiently.
- Different payment options are available to users! Multisig 2/3, and Escrow and FE (100, 50, or 25 ) Bitcoin and Monero.
- Multilingual Forum with many communities.
- Option to reserve shared access to vendors’ accounts to hire staff to take care of their accounts without compromising PGP Key. They can decide to enable access to sales and messages or select one of them.
- Distinguishable physical listings with support for bulk discounts and automated messages after purchase to let consumers know anything they want.
- Digital listings with fully automatic dispatch options (not only one basic auto-dispatch but market support for various individual auto dispatch options based on multiple shipping methods).
- You can delay the message to be sent at the time you want it to get received. For instance, write a message you want to send and then program it to send later at any specific time you wish them to receive instead of sending instantly.
- No hidden fees or withdrawal fees are involved.
Abacus is a great market I use them for 5 months now and I can vouch them.