Hydra Market accounted for 93% of all illegal underground economic activity. Prior to the closing of the site, the average daily income of all underground markets was about $ 4.2 million, and after the closing of the marketplace, according to Chainalysis, this indicator fell to $ 447 thousand. If in 2021 Darkweb market income amounted to about $ 3.1 billion, then in 2022 Darknet revenue decreased to $ 1.5 billion.
10 months after the closure of HYDRA, trading in a dark network has not yet been restored. According to Chainalysis, three new candidates for the title of the largest online market appeared: Omg! Omg! Market, Blacksprut and Mega Darknet Market.
Omg! Omg! Market first entered the leaders, reaching more than 65% of the market share, but after the DDOS attack in June his position weakened, and customers began to move on to competitors – Mega Darknet Market and Blacksprut Market. At present, there is no obvious leader among the online puffs of a dark web.
According to the study, the main way to attract former HYDRA customers to underground marketplaces is to provide services for laundering cryptocurrency and fiat money. Chainalysis reports that Mega Darknet, Blacksprut and OMG began to offer money laundering services in cryptocurrency to attract former Hydra users. Analysts also found evidence of cooperation between these platforms.
According to Eric Dzhardin, who is the head of the cybercriminals research department at Chainalysis, marketplaces turn into financial services for cybercriminals. According to Karl Steinkampu from the Coilfire Consulting Cyber Security Firm, the presence of such services stimulates attackers to perform new cybercriminations associated with digital assets.
In January, it became known that Solaris, the large market of Darknet, specializing in prohibited substances, was “captured” by a smaller competitor called Kraken. Its representatives claim that they hacked the site and databases of Solaris on January 13, 2022.
February 4, in the territory of Moscow, random passers-by began to notice many electronic billboards with advertising of illegal darknnetplais called Blacksprut. A huge animated banner was depicted in a mask with the signature “In search of the best come to me.”