This multi-role classification, to be implemented in future work, can help gain a more nuanced understanding of the ecosystem and the structure of the dark web supply chains. Decentralized networks have become the backbone of modern darknet markets, offering unparalleled anonymity for buyers and sellers. Unlike traditional platforms, these systems distribute data across multiple nodes, eliminating single points of failure and reducing exposure to surveillance. Monero and Zcash have replaced Bitcoin as the preferred cryptocurrencies due to their enhanced privacy features, making transactions nearly untraceable. First, we computed for each month the mean normalized value for each measure for the groups of all vendors and all non-vendors, using min-max normalization.
The detection of stable U2U pairs in the full network is done by using an evolving activity-driven model31, which introduced a statistically-principled methodology to detect the network backbone against what is expected from a proper null model. If a U2U pair occurs significantly more than what expected from the null model, it is labeled as stable, otherwise it is labelled as non-stable, see Fig. The evolving activity-driven model is an appropriate methodology for large temporal networks32 and it is implemented in the Python 3 pip library TemporalBackbone45, where default parameter values have been used. As input parameter, we considered the full network, transactions from/to DWMs and U2U transactions between users (see Section S4). Plotted lines indicate the median value while bands represent the 95% confidence interval.
Identifying Key Players In Dark Web Marketplaces Through Bitcoin Transaction Networks
Surprisingly, although DWMs have gained significant attention from the scientific community and law enforcement agencies, little is known about the key players sustaining their unusual adaptability and responsive dynamics. However, owing to the difficulty of identifying relevant transactions, most studies rely on user surveys17,18 and data scraped from DWM websites19,20,21,22,23,24. In particular, these studies are based on user reviews which carry many inaccuracies, for instance, with respect to the time and value of the transaction19, that further compound error in other measures.
Data And Methods
The identification of key players in cryptomarkets such as successful vendors and administrators, is a vital step in law enforcement interventions. Whereas it can be easy to identify administrators due to titles given to these users, it may be harder to identify successful vendors. It is especially difficult to identify those vendors whose success is yet to come. These tasks might be further complicated when encryption is used for message contents. The results presented in this work showed that network measures computed on the user-to-user communication network and three forum activity indicators, not reliant on knowledge of message content, are useful in predicting (future) successful vendors.
Large Number Of U2U Transactions
Figure 3 shows that, for both current and future success, degree and closeness centrality generally have a worse vendor recall than any of our activity indicators. From May onwards, PageRank outperforms post activity and performs on par with the topics started indicator. Meanwhile, from July onwards, betweenness centrality consistently outperforms both the post activity and topics started activity indicators and performs (nearly) on par with topic engagement. Overall, the topic engagement indicator most consistently achieves high performance in terms of vendor recall. First, network centrality measures require the communication network to have developed and stabilised sufficiently before achieving reliable vendor recall.
- In this paper, we look closely at patterns of U2U trading relationships among DWM users.
- Additionally, betweenness centrality detects the most vendors of all network measures.
- Then, we investigate both market star-graphs and user-to-user networks, and highlight the importance of a new class of users, namely ‘multihomers’, who operate on multiple marketplaces concurrently.
- It automatically routes all the traffic through the Tor Network, allowing you to stay anonymous.
- As such, a high closeness centrality does not intuitively imply a successful vendor.
- Therefore, the S2S network can be seen as a proxy for a distribution network of illegal products.
This Article Is Cited By
Recently, two interview-based studies have suggested that DWMs may also promote the emergence of direct user-to-user (U2U) trading relationships. Here, we carefully investigate and quantify the scale of U2U trading around DWMs by analysing 31 million Bitcoin transactions among users of 40 DWMs between June 2011 and Jan 2021. We find that half of the DWM users trade through U2U pairs generating a total trading volume greater than DWMs themselves. We then show that hundreds of thousands of DWM users form stable trading pairs that are persistent over time. Users in such stable pairs turn out to be the ones with the largest trading volume on DWMs. Then, we show that new U2U pairs often form while both users are active on the same DWM, suggesting the marketplace may serve as a catalyst for new direct trading relationships.
Classification Of Sellers And Buyers
In panels (b, c), we show the number of all sellers and buyers per quarter, respectively. In panels (d, e), we show the median net income in USD of all sellers and buyers per quarter, respectively. In panels (f, g), we show the PDF of the total money received by each seller and the total money sent by each buyer, respectively.
Collective Dynamics Of Dark Web Marketplaces
The European Drug Report 2018 identified the increasing use and availability of sedative drugs amongst young people as an area of particular concern, requiring further investigation, policy consideration and prevention efforts. Since 2014, 14 new benzodiazepines have been reported to the EU Early Warning System, indicating substantial efforts towards illicit drug development within this drug class (European monitoring centre for drugs & drug addiction, 2018). In the USA, benzodiazepine prescription rates continue to increase (Bachhuber, Hennessy, Cunningham, & Starrels, 2016; Lembke, Papac, & Humphreys, 2018).
Germany had the lowest percentage of users in the population for both stimulants and sedatives. The work reports usage rates in EU countries slightly below those seen in the USA (20% lifetime usage vs between 7 and 13% in EU). Evolution was active from January 2014 until March 2015, when it closed due to an exit scam. It formed a combination of a carding forum, where card information (e.g., credit/debit/ID/etc.) is traded, and an underground drug market25. Darknet markets — also known as cryptomarkets — provide a largely anonymous platform for trading in a range of illicit goods and services.
4b, d confirm that, for vendors with between 10 and 100 posts, those found exclusively by betweenness are generally more successful. Notably, the effect seems to be even stronger for future success and this is moreover confirmed to hold for other months in Supplementary Material Section S3. This observation once more highlights the potential of betweenness centrality as an early warning signal. In this section we first discuss our dataset and the (network) measures for identifying key players. Next, we report and interpret results for the task of distinguishing vendors from non-vendors and predicting the levels of vendor success. Then, we explore to what extent the rankings induced by (network) measures can reduce the set of users for law enforcement to investigate, while still including the greatest share of successful vendors.
The raw dataset consists in transactions between Bitcoin addresses, which is initially preprocessed by Chainalysis Inc. (see Section S2). The resulting dataset consists in transactions between entities, that group together clusters of Bitcoin addresses. Namely, we consider transactions made by the 40 entities representing the 40 DWMs under consideration, which directly interact with more than 16 million other entities, who are the users of these DWMs. Users interacting with other users form U2U pairs and we include them in our dataset. We discard single Bitcoin transactions below $0.01 or above $100,000, which are unlikely to show real purchases and minimise false positives.
After all, for betweenness centrality we rely on the fact that the user exists on many shortest paths, and is less reliant on its specific position in the path. When viewed on the scale of the whole network, existing on many shortest paths implies being a central figure in the various conversations occurring on the forum, regardless of whether the individual paths relate to the same conversation. For a vendor, this in turn might imply that they or their products are often discussed and that the vendor actively engages with their clientele, all of which may promote their sales. Thus, a high directed weighted betweenness centrality can be interpreted here as a good indicator of vendor success.
Conclusion And Future Directions
It is important to exercise caution when using darknet markets, and to only transact with reputable sellers. Darknet markets offer a wide variety of goods and services, ranging from illegal drugs and weapons to counterfeit currency and stolen credit card information. Some markets also offer legitimate goods and services, such as digital products and software. However, the vast majority of products and services sold on darknet markets are illegal or fraudulent.
