The Darknet Markets talked about in T.V shows and movies are actually scaringly easy to access and trade on in real-life, one such Marketplace in existence today is Dream Market and hence I believe this Dream Market review is well placed.
Most of you probably already know that you don’t need to be a hacker or coder in order to get to these underground marketplaces, all you need is Tor browser, optionally coupled with a good-enough VPN for added privacy and you’re all set.
Buying/Selling is as easy as signing up for a social media account and the marketplaces have taken adequate measures to secure their users as well. Here’s the review of one of the leading markets of current time.
Dream Market Introduction
Not many marketplaces exist today which can boast of a 5year experience and as vast a listing available as Dream Market. Dream Marketplace was established in 2013 and since then it has gradually been climbing the stairs of popularity.
Here’s a brief eagle’s eye view of the marketplace and what it holds:
- Primary URL: cgpmsltmutyogck3
- Registrations open.
- Age: 5 years (since 2013).
- Supports PGP/ withdrawal pin/ 2FA / and Multisig too.
- Child Porn, Weapons, Murder, Rape, Torture Fentanyl Banned.
- 1 BTC Vendor Bond – Refundable.
- 3 Confirmation Deposits.
- BTC, Monero, Bitcoin Cash accepted.
- Independent official Forum: tmskhzavkycdupbr
- 125574 Products available (as on 29th June, 2018).
Registration Process
Registration is super-easy, simply go to the official link, click on the “Register” link and you’ll have to fill up the following form:
As is evident, absolutely no personal information is required, use any username you want, preferably one super-random and without the least bit of ties to the real-life you, set a password and the withdrawal Pin and you’re all set. Account activation is instant.
User Interface
The reason I start all my Darknet market reviews with the user-interface is that quite a few times I’ve been on markets with clumsy, hard-to-understands interfaces which eventually lead to me abandoning the marketplace forever.
The Dream Market interface is pretty newbie-friendly, all the important navigational buttons such as Profile, Messages, Bitcoin Wallet are listed on the top-bar.
The left-sidebar has all the categories of products available on the marketplace letting anyone and everyone easily get to the type of product they’re hunting for.
Which Products are Available?
You’d only go to a shop which has the items you need, isn’t that right? Dream Market has nearly everything and anything you’d want which your local shops won’t sell to you without a proper license, or even with a license in some cases.
The total number of available products are 125574 which makes it one of the most heavily stocked darknet markets in the industry. Not many other marketplaces can boast of the same quantities.
The available categories are:
- Drugs (Benzos, Cannabis, Steroids, Weight loss, Stimulants, Opioids etc).
- Digital Goods (Data, Drugs, E-books, Hacking etc).
- Drugs Paraphernalia (Harm Reduction).
Obviously, Drugs is the most well-stocked category with as many as 61589 individual listings, these are sub-divided into Steroids, Cannabis etc and these sub-cateogires are further narrowed down into sub-sub categories such as Edibles, Hash, Seeds etc.
Then the Digital Goods too has as many as 52602 listings. Although the sub-category in Digital Goods called “drugs” doesn’t mean real drugs, rather it’ll contain information on drug recipes, safety tips etc.
The Drugs Paraphernalia category is confusing and has everything from Bitcoin cleaner to a real face-cleaner. The services section includes hacking, cashout, money-transfer etc.
The classification on Dream Market is commendable, it doesn’t have a lot of categories, and that actually reduces confusion, gets us faster access and houses everything under the few selected categories.
The only items you can’t get on Dream Market are Child Porn material, Weapons, Murder, Rape, Torture-Material and Fentanyl (although some vendors still seem to be selling Fentanyl).
Search-Feature
On a Darknet market as product-rich as Dream Market you can’t keep scrolling for your product, and hence the search functionality becomes doubly important here.
The search bar is located above the centre-screen and below the top-bar on the marketplace, it houses the following filters:
- Ships to: Checks if the vendor ships to your home country.
- Ships from: Checks the package’s originating location.
- Escrow: Lets you either use escrow or ignore it.
- Category: The exact category of your product.
- Cryptocurrency: The currencies you’re comfortable playing with.
- Price range: The minimum and maximum price-range you’re searching for.
- Search text: The exact keywords of your search.
- Vendor: The name of the vendor in case you’ve got a history or recommendation.
As an example, I keyed-in the naked keyword “hacking” without any other metrics and even then it got me the exact results I was looking for, which was e-books, although other related services such as cashout and carding too were displayed which surely are closely related.
Vending on Dream Market
Dream Market allows both buying, as well as selling on the platform. It requires a vendor-bond of 0.1 BTC (currently USD $587.00) for the application to be accepted.
It’s like a security-deposit which exists to make sure only serious vendors get entry to the program minimizing risks of scammers and frauds on the marketplace.
The bond when compared to bonds of other marketplaces is at par and probably much lower than what the marketplace should be charging, as marketplaces such as Valhalla have as high a bond as 1 BTC.
The vendor bond is refundable if and when a Vendor willingly closes his/her account, note that you won’t get the bond back if your account is terminated by the team for scamming, illegal activities or any other reasons.
The vendor bond is also returned if you gain a certain level of trust on the platform, in this case you get your money back and still retain your vendor status.
As for transparency, it lets buyers easily vet a vendor before purchasing from him as it shows the vendors No. of successful transactions, the reviews other have left for him, the disputes he has been involved with and all the other major metrics.
Security Features
It’s product-rich, has an easy interface and search-functionality, but everything slides into the backdrop when it comes to the security of an underground marketplace.
For starters, Dream Market offers PGP encryption which can be used both for communications with other vendors, as well as for 2-factor authentication.
If enabled, the password login doesn’t work anymore, you’ve to specifically select “PGP Authentication” on the login page, decrypt a message using your PGP key, and only then you’re granted access.
It also has a Withdrawal PIN in place, which makes sure even if your password is compromised, along with your PGP key in that case as well your funds can’t be withdrawn without this Withdrawal PIN.
And finally, there also is 2 of 3 multisig enabled, it’s a feature which shares the transaction key among three parties, the buyer, the vendor and the marketplace, a transaction can’t go through without the approval of at least 2 parties which lowers exit-scam risks as well.
Currencies Support
Dream Market isn’t limited simply to Bitcoins, which it obviously supports but in addition to Bitcoin it also supports Monero as well as Bitcoin Cash which provides some relief to users from the pocket-breaking Bitcoin fee as well as longer transaction time.
It needs 3 confirmations for your Bitcoins to be deposited, and 2 for Monero.
Dream Market Mirrors
Not just products, but Dream Market also is one of the most mirror-rich Darknet markets. These links can be used in case the original Dream market is not working, slow, or is being DDoSed.
- cgpmsltmutyogck3
- 2m7l7ivlrtxae7op
- uhivlt5grrqjhad7
- ptlsz6dxboul2u3z
- jd6yhuwcivehvdt4
- t3e6ly3uoif4zcw2
- 7ep7acrkunzdcw3l
- vilpaqbrnvizecjo
- igyifrhnvxq33sy5
- 6qlocfg6zq2kyacl
- x3x2dwb7jasax6tq
- bkjcpa2klkkmowwq
- xytjqcfendzeby22
- nhib6cwhfsoyiugv
- k3pd243s57fttnpa
- 4hvmvhnqyeorgzlb
- uhivlt5grrqjhad7
- c6ctfwncts3auk4u
These links are totally legit, as they’re displayed on the native homepage by the team and can be transparently verified.
Final Words on Dream Market Review
So that’s it folks, a quick recap? We’ve talked about its registration, security features, user-interface, product listing and even Mirrors. Did I leave something out? Guess not.
One last question remains, how do you ensure your safety on the marketplace? The four basic answers to this question are:
- Use a VPN along with Tor.
- Use Multisig whenever available.
- Always use Escrow.
- Never (I repeat, never) Finalize Early.
Although obviously also make sure you don’t brag of your purchase in the real-world, or leave traces such as real-name, your dog’s name, your wife’s name or anything in the communications, user-account and/or password.
Final tip? Never use the marketplace’s inbuilt “encrypt message” feature, rather encrypt the text manually using GPG4WIN and then paste the encrypted text for the vendor.
Do let me know what you think of the marketplace, also drop your opinion about this Dream Market review in the comments down there.
