Six months ago, "ODN(Ondarknet.com)" reported on the reopening of the AlphaBay dark web marketplace under the leadership of DeSnake, the former number two administrator, four years after it was shut down by the FBI, and visited the newly opened AlphaBay dark web site. Six months later, how is the reopened AlphaBay Dark Web Marketplace doing? "ODN" visited the marketplace again.
First connect to Tor and then open the AlphaBay Marketplace dark web address at：
http://alphabay522szl32u4ci5e3iokdsyth56ei7rwngr2wm7i5jo54j2eid.onion
As before, the entry is the regular clock-based DDOS verification code, but this time the clock adds AlphaBay's darknet onion domain name to let users identify whether it is a phishing site; after passing the clock verification code verification does not enter the homepage as before, but enters the image verification code page that reminds to identify phishing sites, and after passing the second verification enters the homepage of the site.
In the home page of the website, we saw the amazing data. Up to now, AlphaBay dark web marketplace has 221,937 registered users, 3795 active suppliers, the number of goods for sale reached 12,283.
Then "ODN" checked the previous announcement of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on the old AlphaBay Dark Web Marketplace:
"According to publicly available information on AlphaBay prior to its takedown, one AlphaBay staff member claimed that it serviced over 200,000 users and 40,000 vendors."
According to the DEA and DOJ, the old dark web marketplace AlphaBay, which was the larger marketplace on the dark web at the time, had a staggering 200,000 users when it was seized by the FBI. And now, "ODN" finds, six months after original co-administrator DeSnake relaunched the AlphaBay marketplace, the new AlphaBay dark web marketplace has now far surpassed the significant milestones of that time.
As the only dark web marketplace that only accepts Monero currency as a payment method, the AlphaBay dark web marketplace has seen a dramatic increase in popularity, resulting in a rapid increase in registered users and vendors as well as the volume of merchandise. "ODN" estimates that in 2021, the top major dark web marketplaces, such as WhiteHouse Market, ToRReZ Market, Cannazon, Monopoly and Cartel Market, will either shut down their operations or "quit scamming", so AlphaBay dark web marketplace became the new winner, and now it is one of the most popular dark web marketplaces.
However, opening AlphaBay's forum home page, "ODN" found that there are still relatively few registered users and posts, only a few thousand.
At the bottom of the home page, "ODN" saw the dark web marketplace's New Year's greeting announcement at the end of 2021.
From now on if there are significant changes it will be reflected in this News section and in the Forum. Also will add /changelog.txt file which will be updated for a detailed description of each change and improvement. We have a lot of updates that recently went through quality control phase and are now ready to be integrated (vendor description, avatar, force communication PGP-only option for vendors, search/profile/vendor store UI improvements etc.)
The decentralized market network project has progressed significantly. The roadmap will be updated next week. Everyone will get notification when that happens and for detailed information about status check the Forum.
It also means DeSnake, the AlphaBay dark web marketplace administrator, who has been working to update AlphaBay and develop special protections against phishing. He also claims to have other motivations besides money, and he is committed to his new project - a decentralized dark web marketplace, which he says will be open source.
Only time will tell if the new AlphaBay administrator will develop that marketplace into something more, and if he will be more successful than Alexander Cazes, the former administrator who was caught and ended up in prison.
While the new AlphaBay marketplace is quickly becoming very popular, many users are still concerned about the motives behind DeSnake. Why would he reopen the AlphaBay dark web marketplace years after the last administrator of AlphaBay was killed when DeSnake was apparently supposed to have become quite wealthy from the original AlphaBay marketplace and he was simply not bad with money. Some even suspect that the marketplace was run by U.S. law enforcement. Whether the reopened Alphabay marketplace is reliable or not remains to be proven! "ODN" will continue to follow up on further developments in the marketplace.
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