Darknet Markets are markets on the Dark Web. They sell everything that’s either outright illegal (Drugs, Guns, Hacked accounts) or just morally/ethically questionable (Family porn, eBooks on Murder/Rape and so on). We will review one such marketplace in this Grey Market review.
This Grey Market review is purely for research purposes of studying and sharing the types of products, security measures, payment methods and other aspects associated with the Marketplace.
Comparatively, this is a much newer marketplace. Less than half a year old. Hence if you do compare it to other marketplaces out there, I’d request you to take the age into consideration and give the marketplace a bit of leeway.
Let’s get on with this Grey Market review then?
Grey Market Overview
If you’d rather not read through the entire review and just need the core of it, here’s the summary in the shortest possible words:
- Website: greymtqdzxqec5ox.onion
- Registrations: Mandatory (No Invite/Activation-time required).
- Security: 2-FA, PGP, Escrow, PIN.
- Vendor Bond: USD $99.00 (or free).
- Currency: Bitcoin (BTC), Monero (XMR)
- Products: 738.
- Dread: http://dreadditevelidot.onion/d/GreyMarket/
Wallet-less Deposits and Registration
When the official URL is visited, this is the page which is displayed:
“Grey Market The Wallet-Less Marketplace”. This is the marketplace’s tagline shown to a user before the user does anything else on the marketplace.
This makes it clear that GreyMarket is a Wallet-less platform which means that unlike other marketplaces it won’t feature an inbuilt wallet.
Hence, all payments are order-specific. Meaning payments are only made for individual orders, amounting to the exact price of said orders.
This is a good step if you ask me, simply because no wallet means no unused funds in the wallets, which means no funds for the marketplace to run away with! This ensures the marketplace won’t exit-scam.
The second aspect you’d notice is a registration/login form. This shows us that no part of the marketplace is accessible without registering on the platform.
I did register on the platform, which instantly led me to my account. Hence no invite/activation-time required for registrations either.
Product Availability
In my experience, Drugs and Digital Goods are two most commonly found and popular commodities on the Darkweb. Both of these were available on Grey Market, along with quite a few others.
The available products were classified into the following categories:
- Digital
- Drugs
- Services
Even though no indication/information about the exact number of products in each category were available, we decided to calculate them manually.
Drugs as I suspected was the most well-populated category on the platform, with exactly 495 listings. It’s sub-divided into various sub-categories such as Weed, Hashish, Speed, Stimulants, Benzos and every other type of category you can imagine.
The “Digital goods” section consists of exactly 226 products currently. It primarily consists of Porn Accounts, VPN accounts, Hacked accounts etc.
And finally, the Services section only consisted of 17 products. The available products were Ebooks, Fake Notes, Passports, Money transfers etc.
Note that the marketplace shows its total number of products to be exactly 738.
The three categories we calculated add upto 738 as well. This also speaks for the fact that marketplace doesn’t “fake” its numbers as many other marketplaces are accused of.
The marketplace fortunately doesn’t allow or facilitate the sale of Weapons, ChildPorn and Fentanyl.
Security Features
Once I went through the products, it was the marketplace’s security which interested me the most.
So I went into my Profile section. Even though I noticed the apparent lack of any direct “Security” tab, the following tabs were displayed:
The “Password” tab let me edit my Password. The PGP tab on the other hand let me add my PGP Key to the account.
Once the PGP key was added, I was prompted to enable 2-FA, which I now know to be available.
Also when I tried adding my refund BTC and XMR addresses, it asked me to decrypt a PGP message which further showed me the additional uses of PGP in addition to 2-FA.
The “Privacy” tab is something unique as in not something I’ve found on many marketplaces. It simply shows me the last login dates as well as the exact time for my profile.
It can come in handy if I suspect unauthorized access to my account, as this data can’t be replicated or faked hence if there’s a login and it wasn’t me, it’s a hack-indicator.
The “PIN” I set during registrations is another security feature, which ensures that no one can change my password without knowing the PIN. Hence in case my account is compromised, I can still always access it and change the password to block future hacks.
Escrow and F.E
The marketplace also offers Escrow for trades, as well as Finalize-early. Finalize-Early is the mode which instantly releases payments to the vendor, without waiting for the buyer to confirm delivery.
This mode is only available to some trusted vendors, and can be used for faster transactions and even relationship-building (if that’s what you’re there for).
Escrow on the other hand is the mediator between the buyer and the vendor. Funds from the buyer are kept in the Escrow account till a product is shipped. These are released once the buyer confirms delivery. The Escrow can also be used to dispute trades and get refunds.
Payment Modes
By now I had gone through the products and the security on the marketplace. However the “payment modes” make for another important aspect of any Darknet Market, don’t they?
Considering how majority of the goods are illegal, neither the senders nor the receivers of the money want themselves identified.
The two payment modes available on the platform are Bitcoin and Monero. Bitcoin is the oldest and first Cryptocurrency, it also is arguably the most anonymous. Although Monero is pretty anonymous, untraceable and fast as well.
Selling on Grey Market
If you’re a Seller of Darknet products, this section is for you. The marketplace is currently selling its vendor-licenses for USD $99.00 (paid in Cryptocurrencies).
This as compared to most other marketplaces is extremely cheap, while there are marketplaces such as Empire Market charging USD $200, and Valhalla Market charging a whooping 1 BITCOIN!
This vendor fee on Grey Market says nothing about being “Refundable”. The fee can be waived for trusted vendors (with established reputation on other marketplaces).
Also, the marketplace only accepts “Active” vendors, hence Jabber notifications must be kept turned on and a maximum login-gap of 7 days is allowed. Else, products from the vendor are disabled.
Vendors aren’t allowed to sell the banned products. An additional fee of 5% on each sale is levied on the vendors. However level 10 vendors only pay a 2% fee.
These levels are gained from orders, fortunately it even has “negative ratings” hence if a vendor suddenly goes rogue, he’ll also lose levels and ratings!
Grey Market Mirrors
Mirrors are alternative URLs which can be used to access a Darknet Market. These marketplaces are either under constant maintenance, or just being DDoSed.
Hence these Mirrors allow uninterrupted access to the marketplace regardless of the above-said events.
Here are the Grey Market mirrors:
Many websites share fake mirrors and URLs to lure users into “Phishing” traps. To avoid just that, you can verify the legitimacy of the above URLs by decrypting a PGP-signed message found on the Grey-Market F.A.Q.
Conclusion:
So a wrap as far as this Grey Market review is concerned. The website seems pretty easy to use, and hasn’t changed much in terms of user-interface.
The payment methods are anonymous and the products too have variety and quantity. Almost all the aspects offered by Grey Market are similar to what most other established, age-old marketplaces offer.
If I’ve to look at what’s “not offered”, I’d say Mnemonic code. But considering how the PIN lets us recover the accounts anyway, it’s the same thing as the Mnemonic code, even though less secure.
As far as marketplace authenticity goes, it’s not exit-scamming for sure (wallet-less deposits), there’s no minimum deposit either so buyers may purchase cheaper products first for testing purposes.
Although that is just what I felt while researching for this Grey Market review, and I may be completely wrong. If there’s a point which hit you either positive or negative, or you feel something wasn’t included in this Grey Market review, do let us know.
Disclaimer: We do not advocate/encourage or promote Darknet market activities. Any activity on any such Marketplace including Grey Market is totally your own responsibility.
