Markets: Empire

Empire Market was launched during January of 2018 and exit-scammed in August 23, 2020. It was based off of the now-defunct AlphaBay market with BTC, LTC, XMR, Multi-Signature and PGP 2-Factor-authentication features. It was ranked as the largest dark-net market before it exit-scammed with approximately $120,000,000 worth of cryptocurrency. Despite the market being launched about 5 months after the seizures of AlphaBay and Hansa markets, it quickly grew into the largest dark-net market during its’ time. It provided a user-friendly interface and layout design that were very similar to those of AlphaBay. Its’ staff was reportedly very active on the market and was quick to ban or penalize vendors for any rule violations discovered. Drugs and fraud-related items were most commonly sold on the site, and the sale of weapons were strictly prohibited.

Empire Market suffered from many DDoS attacks over the duration of its’ existence, and a phishing campaign so large that it prompted its’ administrators to implement TLS encryption on the site as an anti-phishing measure. It was later revealed on the Dread forum that the market was leaking its’ real IP address due to a mis-configuration in the TLS/SSL, which users speculated that law enforcement must have known about it long before its’ users did. It may have attributed to the administrators decision to shut the market down.