They do now. Governments know they have to act very decisively on these kinds of markets and activities because each time they act it galvanizes everyone to implement the more resilient technology.
This is the antifragile nature that some proponents acknowledge and like.
Before there is proof of a state action, forums go back and forth ad nauseum on what level of work and inconvenience is necessary. After there is proof of a state action, they just go ahead and implement the multisig escrow (making sure consumers and merchants can get their money even if the government seizes the servers, greatly increasing the costs for the government while lowering the bounty collected) privacy enhanced coins (like Monero), contribute to UI/UX improvements for making Monero easier to use, etc
If you look at these darknet busts, the level of effort and coordination has gone up by orders of magnitude over the last decade while the amounts seized have gone down.
What are the biggest and most reputable darknet markets currently? Do they still get taken down frequently? My understanding is that it's easy for state-level actors to unmask hidden service IPs through traffic correlation attacks
Not sure, the way I would find out is open Tor browser and go to dark.fail and then switch to the onion service version of the site (the browser might prompt you, but there should be one on dark.fail to copy and paste)
Then just use that site like normal and it will have a list of popular onion services like the New York Times and Dread and also including darknet markets (DNMs) and their mirrors, and the liveness of those URLs
Then I would go on Dread (if its up) and see what people are saying about any particular DNM, else I would find the darknet market subreddit to see if there is anything there, else find articles about current top markets. some last for so long and are still lasting that they're pretty reliable, so I would probably skip all this if I've still got credentials to one thats still up. its a hassle to sign up to some markets and some more secure ones so it thwarts my curiosity
for just browsing those sites I'm fine with Tor browser, but if you actually want to buy things or download things or communicate with a vendor I would say stick with Whonix (or Tails if thats fine for you) because you need other apps and having Tor for all connections and other anonyming techniques at all times is better.
(if you are going to a site with more objectionable content for even viewing, don't use Tor browser either. dark.fail doesn't list those)
Thanks. I've been out of that world for roughly a decade, it's neat to see a more resilient social ecosystem emerging around these markets. I'm still sort of surprised that the three letter agencies can't just immediately unmask the server IP of new markets when they pop up and take them down immediately
DNMs are several orders of magnitude larger than the Silk Road days and all the technology is way better, Tor is super fast(ish) but that’s partially because the exit nodes and relay nodes are (probably) adversaries lol
Cat and mouse game. They're trying timing attacks all the time while improving the UX, assuming “they” are state actors
This is the antifragile nature that some proponents acknowledge and like.
Before there is proof of a state action, forums go back and forth ad nauseum on what level of work and inconvenience is necessary. After there is proof of a state action, they just go ahead and implement the multisig escrow (making sure consumers and merchants can get their money even if the government seizes the servers, greatly increasing the costs for the government while lowering the bounty collected) privacy enhanced coins (like Monero), contribute to UI/UX improvements for making Monero easier to use, etc
If you look at these darknet busts, the level of effort and coordination has gone up by orders of magnitude over the last decade while the amounts seized have gone down.