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The Top Dark Web Drug Market Is Borked for 4/20

Agora is up, but you can't use it.
​Screengrab: Agora

​It's a 4/20 miracle, sorta! Agora, a popular dark web market for drugs, is online after a month of frequent downtime. But you can't use it.

After a month of nearly constant downtime caused by new users flooding Agora after Evolution, Agora's main competition, disappeared in an apparent exit scam that saw many people lose all their Bitcoin, Agora appears to be up and stable as of today. The market has a new, fast-loading interface under the banner "Agora Beta," but transactions are currently still limited. A blue banner on the site's home page warns, "We are still restoring the functionality, deposits and withdrawals are not online yet."

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During the last month, every successful refresh of Agora's markets could have been your last for quite some time, and buyers and vendors are believed to have had trouble placing orders and retrieving payment, respectively. Although the site never went totally offline, it was largely unusable.

But today, this weediest of days, Agora seems to be consistently loading just fine, and Redditors are celebrating the market's apparent long-term return. Even so, all the downtime leading up to the apparent reboot may also have already ruined 4/20 for some left with their stashes dry as they were unable to place orders, and vendors were unable to fulfill them. "I don't even blame my vendors, why would they ship me anything if they can't guarantee they'll be able to get the money out," wrote a user called "Secondhandburner" on Reddit's /r/DarkNetMarkets subreddit. "'Happy 4/20 from Agora' because wishing someone happy 4/20 is almost as good as them getting their weed in time for 4/20." "SwissAlps," an Agora vendor, wrote, "I logged in to see a bunch of my orders were finalized but I can't withdraw the funds."

The days leading up to 4/20, and the day itself, are usually marked by all kinds of specials on kush and increased sales on the dark web's markets as people stock up. On the Agora forums—which are still largely inaccessible to users—posts advertising 4/20 blowout sales remain untouched since last week.

"[Agora is] mostly crashing because of Evolution," /r/DarkNetMarkets moderator xbsd told me. "BlackBank market [another dark web market] is also getting, like, 2000 new users per day. Because [of] Agora, my favorites sellers are not happy and lost tons of money."

4/20 is also a dangerous time on the dark web, historically. After all, people are buying up a ton of product at once, and simply walking away with all of it has proven too tempting a prospect for some sellers. During the heyday of Silk Road, a pot vendor called "Tony76" ran off with at least $100,000 of people's Bitcoin accumulated during the lead up to 4/20.

Tony76 was allegedly later targeted for assassination by Silk Road's anonymous operator, the Dread Pirate Roberts, because of these actions. Although Ross Ulbricht was convicted of being DPR and running Silk Road, he still faces a separate trial in Baltimore over the alleged murder-for-hire.

Because of this and other, more recent scams like the Evolution fiasco, some users speculated that Agora's downtime was preparation for a similar 4/20 heist on a market-wide scale. These fears appear to be unfounded, as the market is back up, and not fully functional—thus not collecting Bitcoin—on the big day.