Evolution (marketplace)

Former darknet market

Evolution

Type of site

| Darknet market
Available in| English
Owner| Verto
URL| k5zq47j6wd3wdvjq.onion (defunct)[1][2]
Commercial| Yes
Registration| Required
Launched| December 2014
Current status| Offline
An analysis of the defunct Evolution marketplace shows the different types of products and vendors on a market[3]

Evolution was a darknet market operating on the Tor network. The site was founded by an individual known as "Verto" who also founded the now defunct Tor Carding Forum.[4] Evolution was active between 14 January 2014 and mid-March 2015.[5]

## History

[edit]

Launched January 14, 2014, it saw rapid growth within its first several months, helped in part by law enforcement seizures of some of its competitors during the six-month-long investigation codenamed Operation Onymous.[6] Speaking about why Evolution was not part of Operation Onymous, the head of the European police cybercrimes division said it was "because there's only so much we can do on one day."[7] Wired estimated that as of November 2014[update] it was one of the two largest drug markets.[8][9]

Evolution was similar to other darknet markets in its prohibitions, disallowing "child pornography, services related to murder/assassination/terrorism, prostitution, ponzi schemes, and lotteries".[9] Where it most prominently differed was in its more lax rules concerning stolen credit cards and others kinds of fraud, permitting, for example, the wholesaling of credit card data.[9][10]

## Shut down

[edit]

In mid-March 2015, administrators froze its users escrow accounts, disallowing withdrawals, citing technical difficulties.[11] Evolution had earned a reputation not just for its security, but also for its professionalism and reliability, with an uptime rate much higher than its competition.[12][11] Partly for that reason, when the site went offline a few days later, on March 18, the user community panicked.[11] The shut down was discovered to be an exit scam, with the operators of the site shutting down abruptly in order to steal the approximately $12 million in bitcoins it was holding as escrow.[13][14]

## See also

[edit]

* Black market
* Crypto-anarchism
* OpenBazaar
* Ross Ulbricht
* War on drugs

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "Reddit - Dive into anything". Archived from the original on 10 March 2015. Retrieved 23 August 2017.
2. ^ Branwen, Gwern (30 October 2013). "Darknet Market mortality risks". Archived from the original on 23 August 2017. Retrieved 23 August 2017.
3. ^ Compton, Ryan (24 March 2015). "Darknet Market Basket Analysis". ryancompton.net. Archived from the original on 30 June 2015. Retrieved 29 June 2015.
4. ^ "The Most Dangerous People on the Internet Right Now". 1 January 2015. Archived from the original on 22 January 2021. Retrieved 1 August 2015.
5. ^ Shan, Sylvester (2024). Behavioral Profiling of Darknet Marketplace Vendors (PDF) (Bachelor of Advanced Computing (Honours) thesis). The Australian National University.
6. ^ James Cook (7 November 2014). "More Details Emerge Of How Police Shut Down Over 400 Deep Web Marketplaces As Part Of 'Operation Onymous'". UK Business Insider. Archived from the original on 9 November 2014. Retrieved 9 November 2014.
7. ^ "Raids on underground 'Darknet' websites". DW. 7 November 2014. Archived from the original on 12 November 2014. Retrieved 11 November 2014.
8. ^ Greenberg, Andy (6 November 2014). "Not Just Silk Road 2: Feds Seize Two Other Drug Markets and Counting". Wired. Archived from the original on 9 November 2014. Retrieved 6 March 2017.
9. ^ a b c Greenberg, Andy (18 September 2014). "The Dark Web Gets Darker With Rise of the 'Evolution' Drug Market". Wired. Archived from the original on 15 May 2015. Retrieved 24 May 2015.
10. ^ McCluskey, Brent (23 September 2014). "Evolution Replaces Silk Road as New Online Drug Market". The Fix. Archived from the original on 4 December 2014. Retrieved 11 November 2014.
11. ^ a b c Greenberg, Andy (18 March 2015). "The Dark Web's Top Drug Market, Evolution, Just Vanished". Wired. Archived from the original on 5 July 2015. Retrieved 3 September 2016.
12. ^ Glance, David (9 November 2014). "Despite Darknet drug market arrests and seizures, can they be stopped?". The Conversation. Archived from the original on 11 November 2014. Retrieved 11 November 2014.
13. ^ Krebs, Brian (18 March 2015). "Dark Web's 'Evolution Market' Vanishes". Krebs on Security. Archived from the original on 18 March 2015. Retrieved 18 March 2015.
14. ^ Woolf, Nicky (18 March 2015). "Bitcoin 'exit scam': deep-web market operators disappear with $12m". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 18 March 2015. Retrieved 18 March 2015.

## Further reading

[edit]

* Ormsby, Eileen (27 March 2020). "Darkest Markets". Luckbox Magazine.
* Roxburgh, Amanda (18 February 2016). "A Short History Of Darknet Markets". National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre.

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