Some of the studies suggest that the second most popular sites on Tor are darknet markets.

Following on from the model developed by Silk Road, contemporary markets are characterized by their use of darknet anonymized access (typically Tor), Bitcoin, or Monero payment with escrow services, and eBay-like vendor feedback systems.

History

The 1970s to 2011

Though e-commerce on the dark web started around 2006, illicit goods were among the first items to be transacted using the internet, when in the early 1970s students at Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology used the ARPANET to coordinate the purchase of cannabis. By the end of the 1980s, newsgroups like alt drugs would become online centers of drug discussion and information; however, any related deals were arranged entirely off-site directly between individuals. With the development and popularization of the World Wide Web and e-commerce in the 1990s, the tools to discuss or conduct illicit transactions became more widely available.

One of the better-known web-based drug forums, The Hive, launched in 1997, serving as an information-sharing forum for practical drug synthesis and legal discussion. The Hive was featured in a Dateline NBC special called The "X" Files in 2001, bringing the subject into public discourse. From 2003, the "Research Chemical Mailing List" (RCML) would discuss sourcing "Research Chemicals" from legal and grey sources as an alternative to forums such as alt drugs psychedelics. However, Operation Web Tryp led to a series of website shutdowns and arrests in this area.

Since the year 2000, some of the emerging cyber-arms industry has operated online, including the Eastern European "Cyber-Arms Bazaar", trafficking in the most powerful crimeware and hacking tools. In the 2000s, early cyber crime and carding forums such as ShadowCrew experimented with drug wholesaling on a limited scale.

The Farmer's Market was launched in 2006 and moved onto Tor in 2010. In 2012, it was closed and several operators and users were arrested as a result of Operation Adam Bomb, a two-year investigation led by the US Drug Enforcement Administration. It has been considered a "proto-Silk Road" but the use of payment services such as PayPal and Western Union allowed law enforcement to trace payments and it was subsequently shut down by the FBI in 2012.

Silk Road and Early Markets

The first marketplace to use both Tor and Bitcoin escrow was Silk Road, founded by Ross Ulbricht under the pseudonym "Dread Pirate Roberts" in February 2011. In June 2011, Gawker published an article about the site, which led to "Internet buzz" and an increase in website traffic. This in turn led to political pressure from Senator Chuck Schumer on the US DEA and Department of Justice to shut it down, which they finally did in October 2013 after a lengthy investigation.

Silk Road's use of all of Tor, Bitcoin escrow and feedback systems would set the standard for new darknet markets for the coming years. The shutdown was described by news site DeepDotWeb as "the best advertising the dark net markets could have hoped for" following the proliferation of competing sites this caused, and The Guardian predicted others would take over the market that Silk Road previously dominated.

The months and years after Silk Road's closure were marketed by a greatly increased number of shorter-lived markets as well as semi-regular law enforcement takedowns, hacks, scams, and voluntary closures.

Atlantis, the first site to accept Litecoin as well as Bitcoin, closed in September 2013, just before the Silk Road raid, leaving users just one week to withdraw any coins. In October 2013, Project Black Flag closed and stole their user's bitcoins in a panic shortly after Silk Road's shutdown. Black Market Reloaded's popularity increased dramatically after the closure of Silk Road and Sheep Marketplace; however, in late November 2013, the owner of Black Market Reloaded announced that the website would be taken offline due to the unmanageable influx of new customers this caused. Sheep Marketplace, which launched in March 2013, was one of the lesser-known sites to gain popularity with Silk Road's closure. Not long after those events, in December 2013, it ceased operation after two Florida men stole $6 million worth of user's bitcoins.