Essentially, it determines whether a node is central based on its distances, i.e. shortest path lengths, to all other nodes. In other words, where degree was a measure of how well someone is connected locally, closeness is a measure of how well connected a node is globally, i.e., to the entire network. Harmonic closeness centrality behaves essentially the same as standard closeness centrality and extends properly to directed and disconnected networks, i.e., networks with node pairs that are not connected by any (directed) path35. The relative (a) and absolute (b) difference score between vendors over non-vendors. Positive scores indicate that vendors achieve higher normalized network centralities or activity indicators than non-vendors on average.
Novak et al. (2016) surveyed just over 22,000 people aged between 12 and 49 in Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Spain and Sweden with the intention of investigating NMPDU, and the characteristics of those users. They find that Spain and Sweden had the most prevalent use of sedatives, followed by Great Britain and Denmark. Germany had the lowest percentage of users in the population for both stimulants and sedatives. The work reports usage rates in EU countries slightly below those seen in the USA (20% lifetime usage vs between 7 and 13% in EU). Evolution was active from January 2014 until March 2015, when it closed due to an exit scam. It formed a combination of a carding forum, where card information (e.g., credit/debit/ID/etc.) is traded, and an underground drug market25.
Market Activity
Trade is booming despite disruptions from law enforcement and particularly “exit scams”, in which market admins abruptly close down sites and take all available funds. Markets like Nexus and Abacus dominate due to their consistent link availability and encrypted onboarding. Buyers should avoid direct searches and rely on lists with PGP-signed updates.
Can I Get In Trouble For Using Darknet Markets?
Then, we explore to what extent the rankings induced by (network) measures can reduce the set of users for law enforcement to investigate, while still including the greatest share of successful vendors. Finally, we look at the set of top ranked users for the most promising network centrality measure and activity indicator at a specific point in time. We do so to establish how well represented key players are among these top ranked users. Examples include the sale of high-quality products with low risk for contamination (including lacing and cutting), vendor-tested products, sharing of trip reports, and online discussion of harm reduction practices.
Social Physics
Analysing and understanding cryptomarkets is essential to become proactive in the fight against the illicit drug trade. This study analysed data that had previously been collected on cryptomarkets from December 2013 to March 2015. The results revealed the domestic nature of the virtual Australian illicit drug trade (i.e. Australian sellers essentially ship their products to local customers). Particularly, the virtual Australian illicit drug trade is dominated by amphetamine-type substances (ATS), mainly methamphetamine and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), and cannabis. Australia, as a shipping country, accounts for half of the methamphetamine offered and purchased on Silk Road 2. Moreover, it was observed that the online price fixed by Australian sellers for the considered illicit drugs is higher than for any other shipping countries, which is in line with previous studies.
Online And Offline Determinants Of Drug Trafficking Across Countries Via Cryptomarkets
Thus, betweenness centrality is able to detect the largest share of successful vendors not included by any of the activity indicators. Therefore, reducing the set of users for law enforcement to investigate using betweenness centrality may provide a fresh perspective. Key players include the administrators and moderators responsible for the existence and proper functioning of the cryptomarket. However, they also include the more successful vendors that are responsible for the majority of the trade conducted on the cryptomarket.
For users in stable pairs who met both inside and outside DWMs, we find that during the first lockdowns in 2020 trading volume fell with respect to January of the same year, suggesting that they were negatively impacted by COVID-19 restrictions. After that, trading volume sharply increased over the whole of 2020, see Figure S8. The number of stable U2U pairs created each day was, however, steady over time during 2020, even though more U2U pairs were created compared to the same period in 2019, see Figure S9. Overall, stable U2U pairs have shown resilience to the systemic stress caused by COVID-19, suggesting, once again, that these trading relationships are fundamentally independent from the underlying DWMs. Monthly vendor recall of top vendor percentile (top 0–20% vendors in terms of sales) among the top 20% of all users based on the network measures and activity indicators. Higher vendor recall indicates a greater portion of the top vendor percentile was found.
Network Measures & Activity Indicators
We focus on a large-scale dataset from the Evolution cryptomarket, which we model as an evolving communication network. Results indicate that user and forum activity, measured through topic engagement, is best able to identify successful vendors. Interestingly, considering users with higher betweenness centrality in the communication network further improves performance, also identifying successful vendors with moderate activity on the forum.
Quick Links
- However, the success of law enforcement is just one possible explanation for this decline.
- It is important to exercise caution when using darknet markets, and to only transact with reputable sellers.
- Cryptomarkets extend some of these developments, seeking to emphasise conflict resolution, cooperation and professionalism and punish predation 45, 46, making their ethos more attractive to buyers and dealers 47.
- Edges are multihomers, i.e., traders that are simultaneously active in both markets (sellers in the multiseller network, and buyers in the multibuyer network).
To assess this, we looked at the relative difference scores between the top percentile and all vendors (Fig. 2a, b) and between the top and sub-top percentile (Fig. 2c, d) for both current and future success. Figure 2a shows that for all measures the currently most successful vendors have on average higher network centralities and activity indicators. After the first month and with the exception of July and August 2014 for betweenness centrality, Fig.
Cryptomarkets tend to address established PWUD who mainly already have access to existing distribution systems. Their greatest impact may be on what is available and the quantities available, and not the overall ease of access. Modern lists also include vendor scorecards, linking directly to market profiles. This eliminates guesswork, as buyers can verify a vendor’s history before entering the market. The combination of updated links and transparent metrics streamlines the entire purchasing process. These features create a reliable environment, encouraging repeat business.
The same pattern is observed in the whole S2S network (see Supplementary Information Section S5). I wanna provide labelled products, good advice and service, like a real business. Not sit in a shitty car park selling $10 bags from a car window all day.
Therefore, the induced rankings have the potential to assist law enforcement by allowing them to focus investigative efforts on higher ranked users. Furthermore, betweenness centrality was shown to have potential as an early warning signal, as high betweenness appears to precede vendor success. Finally, among the remaining network measures and activity indicators, topic engagement consistently showed the highest difference scores. This suggests that topic engagement may provide the best predictions of vendor success. Here, we set out to find the main actors in the DWM ecosystem and assess their systemic impact on a dataset of 40 million Bitcoin transactions involving the 31 major markets in the period 2011–2021. Importantly, the algorithm returns reasonable estimates for the number of sellers when compared against a benchmark of nine DWMs where estimates exist.
Decentralized networks have become the backbone of modern darknet markets, offering unparalleled anonymity for buyers and sellers. Unlike traditional platforms, these systems distribute data across multiple nodes, eliminating single points of failure and reducing exposure to surveillance. Monero and Zcash have replaced Bitcoin as the preferred cryptocurrencies due to their enhanced privacy features, making transactions nearly untraceable. First, we computed for each month the mean normalized value for each measure for the groups of all vendors and all non-vendors, using min-max normalization. From this the relative and absolute difference scores between vendors and non-vendors was computed for each of the four network measures and three activity indicators (see “Methods” section for more details on their computation). In these figures, lines give a third polynomial approximation of the trend based on the monthly centralities and activity indicators.
