Silk Road, one of the first online black markets that emerged on the Tor network, had quickly gained notoriety for selling illegal goods, mostly drugs, online. Started in February 2011 by Ross William Ulbricht, the website ran uninterruptedly for almost two years until the FBI shut it down and arrested Ulbricht. Shortly afterwards, Silk Road 2.0 was started. It was active for a year, but again, the FBI cracked it as part of “Operation Onymous”, a joint operation between the US and the European Agencies. While the governments boasted about their success in busting black market sites, the reality is quite different. Today, over 50 darknet markets like Agora Market and Evolution are thriving on Tor.
Silk Road’s failure is attributed to its centralized administration. Its founder/admin, Ulbricht, was too expressive about his libertarian views. Assuming the alias “Dread Pirate Roberts”, he openly criticized government-imposed restrictions on e-commerce sites in several discussion forums. Such actions eventually helped the FBI in tracing him. As a lesson learnt from this, the new platforms like Agora Market are implementing a decentralized model which does not involve a figurehead/admin and a data-center from where the website is maintained. This approach makes it extremely difficult for the law enforcements to track down the black market sites.
Online drug vendors never like it when the darknet market they are a part of gets shut down abruptly. In fact they lose currency as well as loyal customers. They are always on lookout for a fully secure platform which helps them carry out their business uninterruptedly for a long time. The closure of Silk Road 2.0 immediately created a vacuum into which other sites are filling in. Agora Market is one such website which saw a manifold increase of business in the past few months. It sells mostly illegal items like drugs, weapons, and forfeited documents accepting cryptocurrency. They have a very tight security which makes them almost impossible to be traced. To access Agora Market, you'll have to download the Tor browser software and install it on your computer. You must also have VPN software installed. This encrypts all your browsing history so that no one even your internet service provider, cannot trace it. It is always recommended that you follow all possible security precautions when accessing black market sites.
