Dear Community,
Since the shutdown/seize of popular Darknet markets such as Alphabay trade route or Hansa, a number of alternatives presented themselves in the industry, Agartha is one such marketplace and that’s what this Agartha Market review is about.
The options available now, such as Empire Market or even Agartha weren’t necessarily created after the collapse of those giants, but this marketplace did exist prior to the events they just didn’t get enough of the spotlight which they enjoy now.
Note that this Agartha Market review is purely for educational purposes, any use, including legal or otherwise is completely and solely your own responsibility.
This section should get you an insight into the marketplace and all its primary features and numbers which should get you a pretty good idea of the marketplace’s capabilities before diving right into this Agartha Market review:
- Primary URL: Only with Tor Browser
- Registration: Mandatory.
- Supports Escrow, Multisig, Login Phrase, and Security PIN.
- Vendor Bond: 0.02BTC.
- Currency: Bitcoin, Litecoin, Monero, Bitcoin Cash, Dash, and Vertcoin.
- 136 Products available.
- Marketplace fee: 2.5% for buyers.
Agartha Market is a registration-only marketplace meaning it can only be accessed if you register on the marketplace either as a buyer, or a vendor. No part of the platform can be accessed without registration.
The registration process, however, is completely anonymous, it asks for a username, password, a 4-digit pin, and a security phrase.
Who can Use Agartha Market? – User Interface Review
By “Who” I mean to denote the technical knowledge or computer-skills a person needs in order to be able to order such rare items such as Drugs and documents of the Dark Web.
This is what the website looks like:
Like most other Darknet Markets, they have a top-bar, a left-sidebar and then the center-screen.
The top-bar is like the Main-menu for the site, with all the important links which can be used to reach the different parts of the website, such as Profile, Wallet, Help and so on.
The left-sidebar is completely clutter-free and holds no useless information or tabs, there’s just one “Categories” section which holds all the different product categories that the marketplace offers products in.
For those who’re users of Cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin, it also shows the price of 1 Bitcoin in context to those other Cryptocurrencies helping them judge the product-prices better.
And then it also provides the option to change the display-currency altogether, so that the prices of the products are displayed in a currency you understand (such as USD, INR, British Pound, Russian Ruble, etc).
The center screen is divided into a nice table, showing the name, price, name of the vendor, shipment source and potential destinations.
That’s just about it. My verdict? Any 5th-grade kid with a social media profile is more than qualified to understand the marketplace.
Does it Require Registrations? If yes, How Anonymous is it?
Like almost all other Darknet Markets, Agartha Market too requires registration not because it wishes to track you, but so that it can keep the orders organized, and assign it to profile and users for tracking, support, payments and everything else.
This is the registration page for the marketplace:
All of the information asked for, such as username, password, PIN, Login Phrase can and should be completely random, with absolutely no connection to your real life name, address, interests or anything else.
Hence no anonymity is breached and nothing can be tied to you. Then again, it has a strict no data storage policy, meaning vendors ought to delete all user data (such as Profile name, payment method and everything else) after a successful transaction.
The Hidden Truth about Agartha Market Products.
Being a Darknet Market, it obviously sells products which are either completely illegal or strictly controlled otherwise.
Taking a look at its product-categories it can be safely stated that it primarily is a Drug-dominated Darknet Market, although other products too are allowed as indicated by the “Digital Goods” and “Services” categories.
If the numbers shown on the left-sidebar are to be believed the marketplace would’ve exactly 136 products, but the reality doesn’t seem parallel with those numbers:
When manually checked it was found that despite showing 34 products on the left-sidebar, Cannabis only had 5 products, with the price-range for Cannabis being ฿ 0.011217 for the cheapest product and ฿ 0.420624 for the highest.
Stimulants on the left-sidebar showed 26 individual listings, but only one product in the category was actually found and it was being sold for ฿ 0.091112BTC (USD $350.00).
Then there’s Psychedelics, according to the sidebar it should get us 24 listings, but again only 4 products were found in the category with the most expensive being sold for USD $45.00 and the cheapest for USD $19.00. Pills too officially should have 13 products, but actually only accounted for 1 of them.
Dissociatives on the left-sidebar have 11 listings but in reality only 1 for USD $35.19. Then there are services, with 10 listings on the sidebar but only 5 actually being available, the highest service goes as high as USD $100,000 while the cheapest being USD $600.
Finally, there are Digital Items, these have no listings at all despite showing 5 on the sidebar.
So truth be told, out of the 136 individual listings being shown only around 17 could be actually found on the platform!
The actual numbers are obviously pretty low, considering how it’s a third-party marketplace and on top of that, it misleads users which are another reason why I’d rate it 1/5 on its products’ for this Agartha Market review.
How to Place an Order on Agartha Market?
This section would help you when it comes to placing orders on the marketplace and get an insight into how easy, or hard it is doing so.
The first step is obviously finding the product you need, either the search bar on the left-sidebar or the categories section can be used, just like searching for products on any other E-commerce website.
Once you do get to the product, simply click on it to reach the product page, this is where more details about the products are made available. Simply click on the “Buy” button.
Specify the order quantity, method of payment and shipping method wanted on the next page, and click on Proceed.
Finally, fill out the mini-form asking for your shipping information on the next page, and enter your security PIN (set during registration).
If you have sufficient funds, your order is placed instantly. If not, it would ask you to add funds. In that case, click on the “Wallets” link on the top bar > then choose the currency you wish to deposit funds for > to click on “Get new address” > send funds to this address.
Note that the minimum deposit limit is 0.0005 (currency value) for any currency you deposit, so it’s 0.0005 BTC, 0.0005 DASH, 0.0005 XMR and so on. Also, after generating a new address, users need to wait at least 7 hours before another address can be generated.
It’s pretty considerate with the currencies it accepts and the list includes Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, VertCoin, Monero as well as Bitcoin Cash.
Protection Against Hackers and Scams
A large part of how I judge a marketplace depends on its security features, the same holds true for this Agartha market review as well.
PGP Based 2-FA
Agartha has 2-Factor authentication when enabled it’s an additional firewall on top of the normal password. A PGP encrypted message needs to be decoded using every user’s personal, secret PGP private key in order for the account to be accessed.
Can be reached from Profile > Change Settings.
Multisig Transactions
Multisig transactions are available as well, they make it mandatory for at least 2 out of 3 parties to sign a transaction before funds can be moved, making sure no party can scam the other, without the approval of at least 1 other involved party. The three parties being The Marketplace, the Vendor and the Buyer.
Anti-Hacker and Anti-Phishing Firewalls
The security PIN is another layer of protection required before a purchase can be made, or account information changed. This makes sure even if the account is compromised, PGP keys too, funds still can’t be moved, or account can’t be locked/changed without the PIN.
The Login Phrase is a special phrase set by you stored on the Marketplace’s database and is displayed every time you log in.
Phishers may clone the marketplace layout and try to scam you, but they do not get a hold of the site database, hence on a fake phishing website this phrase isn’t displayed indicating you’re not on the official marketplace.
Vending and Vendor Transparency
Vending on the marketplace needs a 0.02 BTC deposit, a kind of security deposit, or what’s officially called the vendor-bond.
The Vendor transparency is a security feature I believe for the buyers, the level of information shown about a vendor before they make a purchase.
Any vendor’s name can be clicked on the marketplace to reach their profiles, the information divulged by the marketplace includes:
- Registrations Date
- Ratings
- of Deals.
- Level
- And Last Login.
In my personal opinion, additionally, the number of disputes and rating on other marketplaces is something that certainly could provide more insights into a vendor.
How Good is the Search Functionality on Agartha Market?
The search functionality is important simply because the more filters and better options it provides, the easier and faster it’ll be for users to get to their products.
This is an aspect Agartha is a major disappointment, there’s only a simple search text-box, with the only filters being Price low to high and vice versa, Recent and Country.
Other Marketplace,
Link 1: Only with Tor Browser (Agartha Market)
Link 2: Only with Tor Browser (Tochka Free Market)
Link 3: Only with Tor Browser (Apollon Market)
Kind regards,
crok2000
No comments:
Post a Comment