A “darknet marketplace” is an online black market that generally sells illicit drugs or stolen information. These markets are on the hidden part of the internet invisible to Google. It might sound like a scary, out of reach underworld but the reality is that it’s right there, just a click away. In about 10 minutes with a bit of Googling and downloading you can access these darknet markets.
Dark0de Reborn is a market that’s quickly rising to the top. With Dark0de, buying drugs is made easy. You can search listings filtered by price, quality, and point of origin. There are star ratings for sellers, detailed product reviews, support teams, an escrow system, and even a built in cryptocurrency exchange. A few of the many categories to choose from are cannabis, ecstasy, stimulants, dissociatives, opioids, and benzos.
And just like Amazon or eBay, you can have these things discretely shipped right to your doorstep, all from the comfort of your own home.
Interview With Darknet Marketplace Dark0de Reborn
Why and when did you decide to get involved in a Darknet market
We have a team of varying experiences with the Darknet. All extensive but in different roles. With many years of experience in those roles. This makes us uniquely able to understand both buyers and sellers, their needs, wants and are able to give very specific advice on how to operate with success and stay safe. As well as deliver rock solid development quality.
This community has grown exponentially and everyone wants a bite. But to be able to serve this community we understood we cant just take something that someone else build and put it online. The problem is that those assets are very limited in functionality compared to what we wanted to offer in a Darknet Marketplace.
We also know that many people who buy and sell offline, on the street are exposed to potential violence and limited in their choice of quality and advise. For this reason we wanted to develop a platform that offers the strong basics of a safe and secure home to conduct business on and at the same time offer something that’s full of innovation and new features. There is no reason why a Darknet Platform has to be a boring experience. Safety and a great experience can easily be combined with todays technology.
With Dark0de we have set the goal for ourselves to become one of the top markets delivering a unique Darknet experience with high quality products, a safe environment for users and a new home on the Darknet for everyone who needs it.
What is your role at Dark0de Market?
I am responsible for all communication and the entire support staff. There is no official statement that does not go past my eyes before being put out into the universe. I always try to communicate our message with an undertone of our ideals:
Communication in a clear and unbiased form while treating everybody equal. We do not believe that attacking someone for his or her opinion or responding with negative emotions is the road to any kind of success. We believe in respecting opinions and questions and to let them help us improve Dark0de where possible.
And trust me, clear and respectful communication will get you a very long way.
What features does Dark0de Reborn currently have that can distinguish it from other markets?
Aside from the main features such as Escrow and FE, we also have fully implemented MultiSig Payments and even Dead-drop listing options. And apart from the standard categories we have expanded our product offering significantly to offer a much wider variety of products.
One of the main features, if you ask me, is the design. The java free animations and menus and the custom made design throughout the market. These are things that make a website great to use and very possible to implement while maintaining a complete java free and secure market environment.
The second point I want to mention is our exchange. We have a coin exchange on the market if you need to change your Bitcoin to Monero and Vice Versa. This gives the user more freedom and no need to use multiple platforms and it results in a safer experience.
Another main KPI is our Buyer Request Feature (BRF). We are the very first market to implement a system where buyers can create Request Listings and vendors can place a bid on these listings. This enables buyers to choose the best vendor for their order and it enables vendors to have more control over their cash-flow. The buyer request feature is developed on a page wide world map on which users can see all listings per part of the world.
We also have a very well designed Vendor Sales Dashboard showing data-sets such as:
- Sales per month
- Best sold products
- % of returning customers
- Amount of funds in Escrow
And much more.
We have developed this to give vendors a more in depth look in how they are performing and where they can adjust their operations to achieve a higher revenue.
There is also an automated support system where users can find guided answers to their questions instead of having to wait for a reply. Yes, users can still create support tickets and we strive to have a very fast response time but an instant answer is always the best.
There are many more unique features to Dark0de that our users will have to discover for themselves.
Never, ever threaten or blackmail a buyer. Simple rule.
What exactly are DDOS attacks and how do you combat them?
A Denial-of-service (DDos) attack is intended to make a network resource become unavailable due to a certain overload (“flooding the system”). This can come in different shapes and sizes and in the end there are multiple attack forms that can be used on Darknet Markets as we have seen throughout the years.
Our Development team has used the Endgame Filter (Created by Dread, /u/Paris and /u/Mr_White) who, by the way, have really done a solid job on it. We have modified the Endgame Filter a bit for our specific needs but it is still mainly based on their suggested implementations.
We have also implemented a beta version of our custom mirror system in which every user will get a private link based on their activity in the Support Tab of their message system. Users with frequent enough activity will get a guarantee to always be able to connect to the market. If the V3 links are offline throughout the Tor network, as we have seen in the last couple of days, eventually these links will automatically change to V2 links.
This dynamic Private Link system will give our users the opportunity to have a very high % of accessibility to Dark0de.
In what ways do you prevent buyers from being scammed on Dark0de?
We have separate teams for spam, scams, disputes, tickets and account monitoring. Each element is reviewed individually to minimize scams and catch them very early on if they do slip through our nets. We have also implement special badges such as the “Review Badge”. This can show if a vendor has official reviews on third party platforms such as dread to improve Harm Reduction and product quality.
We are currently working on a Harm Reduction and test system which will have its own API to be integrated in external platforms. Eventually this will enable everyone to be able to find more information on Dark0de sellers, the products and the quality of their products that will be readily available.
These are all ways in which we are working on and developing (new) ways to reduce scamming and increase Harm Reduction.
Dark0de also upholds a very simple 1 strike and you’re out policy. If users break the buyer or seller rules in a severe enough way we cant allow these users to be bale to operate on Dark0de anymore. We are very strict in this and all our policies as we have seen many users being the victim of scam on various platforms and want to reduce this as much as humanly possible.
What exactly is “Dark0de Trading” and how does it work?
This is a feature that is still being worked on in which we give our users the option to purchase crypto within the Dark0de platform. At this point we don’t want to give much information on it as the development of this feature is not finished yet.
All I can say is that much like the exchange and the mixer that will soon be re-enabled again after upgrading, the trade feature is also part of a plan to make Dark0de a more complete platform on which the user has everything he/she needs to safely conduct business.
Can you tell us about your business volume?
We are growing very fast and for the rate we are growing at we have very high volumes but for safety reason we will not be sharing any specific details.
What is the process like for building a Darknet market? How long does it take?
This is different for every market. Some markets use a pre-made script and expand on that and some build the market themselves. We have built Dark0de ourselves and in this sense it took quite some time for the first version to be completed. Since then we have done multiple larger and smaller implementations and market-wide upgrades which are all part of a larger plan towards where we want Dark0de to eventually be.
We are very dedicated to our plan and have the ambition to see it through. Needless to say; our future plans are to stay around for a long time. In the (near) future you will see more innovative functionalities and upgrades to Dark0de Market.
Looking back at the last 8 months and the upgrades and development we have put into it should give you an idea of our plan and the knowledge that we are here to stay.
How many vendors are on Dark0de Market?
We currently have a little over 800 vendors. Especially the last 3 months we have been growing very fast. The vendors that join Dark0de sell anything from Drugs to hacks and even jewellery.
Because we have such a wide variety of categories that we offer, we attract many strong vendors that are able to start their business on Dark0de Market.
What qualities do you think make a great vendor?
Some qualities may be different depending on the product or service the vendor is selling but generally a great vendor has three things;
1- In depth knowledge about their product or service. Being able to answer questions related to successful usage of the product or service and able to answer questions related to harm reduction.
2- Especially for physical products a great vendor goes the extra mile. He/She understand the elements being used in the shipping process such as scanners, what kind of scanners, what kind of materials fit the decoy to the product etc. The vendor should also be able to deliver extras such as documents, invoices, shipping papers, anything that makes the shipment look legit, has the highest probability of success.
3- Never, ever threaten or blackmail a buyer. Simple rule.
Overall the vendor should be understanding and friendly but is definitely free to defend his/her hard work. It can be a fine line to walk on sometimes but if you do it right you can become a great vendor.
The idea is that when you wake up the next morning, Dark0de will still be here.
What drug is the most sold on the market? Is there anything that you dont allow to be sold?
Currently I would say the most sold drugs are Cocaine and Cannabis. Ecstasy and LSD are closely following. But these things come and go. We have seen many trends over the years. Sometimes its Speed (Amphetamine), sometimes its MDMA and then it changes again. Humans are interesting creatures and they always move on after a certain while to something new, or something that is coming back in style. This is normal, we all want to change things up sometimes.
As said before; we have a very wide range of categories and listed products so there will definitely be something in there for everyone.
How would you describe dark0de market in 3 words?
Fast growing
Easy to use
Reliable support
Any plans to drop btc and support monero exclusively?
Currently both coins are heavily used and we are not on the point yet that we feel like we should exclude Bitcoin. There are many Opsec upgrades and Low hanging fruits that all users should consider while operating on a market place (buying or selling).
Many of them can be found in /d/Opsec
We do have plans to add a handful of more privacy coins in the (near) future and we have a short list but it is yet to be decided if this is indeed the final list. It all depends on what the Cryptomarket and its users will do and demand in the months to come.
What are your thoughts on the current dark net market scene?
To be honest, there are some great markets out there but unfortunately also some that show very little development input and effort to make a change in this community. Many Buyers and Sellers have lost money in many exits but I can sincerely say that our dream is a little different. Taking Hydra as an example, to any which way you look at it, it creates a form of stability. I know everyone has their opinion and so do we but we are convinced that this community needs more markets that are here to stay, grow and develop.
There needs to be new stability, a long-term stability, in order to have a healthy growth for this community. We do expect this community to grow a lot especially now that there is light at the end of the Covid tunnel and we are determined to keep bringing the best platform possible to facilitate that growth.
Hugbunter said this week that he is aware of at least 2 markets that have paid for attacks against other markets in the recent weeks and of one wishing to pay for retaliation attacks. What are your thoughts on all of this?
It is not a surprise to hear that one market paid to DDOS another one but in this climate we don’t really believe it a smart thing to do. All we need to know for ourselves is that we have not conducted any attacks on other markets and certainly do not plan to do so, as we feel that scaling, being reachable and developing a unique market are greater keys to success.
What is your vision for Dark0de? Where do you see it 1 year from now?
Our vision is to be one of the absolute top market in size and functionality. To have implemented larger parts of our vision and our plan and to be able to serve as a home for many buyers and seller to reliably conduct business on. The idea is that when you wake up the next morning, Dark0de will still be here.We have worked very hard and will continue to work even harder to get to that point.
Do you have any advice for vendors or buyers?
Stay humble, no matter how little or how much money you make. Or how small or how large you do business. Everyone is equal and deserves equal treatment. And if a seller offers a high quality service to all of their buyers, regardless of size or product then we will have a lot more great vendors among us. And buyers will follow them.
Anything else you’d like to add? Where can people find you?
You can find current links to Dark0de on:darkfail