Tormarket closing for 2-6 months

TormarketSupport · 2023-03-16 15:30

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The market needs to take a break from operation. It will be closed for 2 -
6 months from taking new orders.  It has been running 24/7 for five years and
has become the longest running English language DNM (1).  New orders will
need to be disabled at the end of March.  When the site comes back it will
have better layout, improved support system and a solution to the problem
of running direct pay when blockchain fees are high (2).

After new orders are disabled and there are no new support tickets to resolve
so the site will go offline some time in April.  All escrow will be paid
out and disputes resolved first.

Vendors can get free accounts on other markets so it is recommended to apply
to them before this site is offline.

Thank you for choosing this market over the larger more popular markets.


1.
https://theconversation.com/the-dark-web-down-under-whats-driving-the-rise-and-rise-of-nzs-tor-market-for-illegal-drugs-191658


2. The problem with direct pay is many buyers do not understand bitcoin
transaction fees, leading to underpaid orders, orders expiring and costs
processing refunds on chain. Also the support workload is highly correlated
to how busy the btc blockchain is (when btc fees spike up).  Of all orders
receiving some payment, 21% of them pay an incorrect amount - 1 in every 5
orders. This is a long term proportion when fees are almost always at 1-2
sat/byte. But when fees spike the number of incorrect payments goes much
higher. Therefore it is not feasible to run direct pay only when btc fees
are high. High btc fees are inevitable over time as miner rewards lower and
usage adoption grows.

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martinagrice · 2023-03-17 09:50

After having been a buyer on Tormarket for close to 5 years I'd like to thank TormarketSupport for providing this resource and wish them all the best for the future.

With a bit of luck they will be able to relaunch the site but even if they decide not to there are many people who owe them thanks.

Ngā mihi nui ki a koe

LittleIndian · 2023-03-17 11:00

Thank you TM! Great service for people that believe in the freedom to make their own informed choices.

All the best and I look forward to your return.

trapmaster · 2023-03-17 16:40

I second gingerbreadman. Fiends are gonna fiend, but at the end of the day vendors are gonna want to make money so gonna have to see where this goes.

PredatorLabs · 2023-03-18 11:50

Thank you for running the market flawlessly admin, I've really enjoyed my time here.

PredatorLabs · 2023-03-18 12:00

This has been the best, most well run marketplace in history. Great admin, great customers, no exit scams, just the straight up agorism this blockchain technology was designed for. I'm honored to have been part of it.

TormarketSupport · 2023-03-18 14:10

The bonds will all be paid back in April once orders finalized.

Thank you for the feedback. It was a difficult decision but hopefully we are at the start of a bitcoin bull run and from past experience of the last bull run, tx fees made it really hard to run the market. Not sure what the solution is long term other than everyone using Lightning instead of on-chain btc.

PredatorLabs · 2023-03-18 14:10

Would you lose too much fee revenue going Monero only, or Monero+Litecoin?

TormarketSupport · 2023-03-18 14:40

PredatorLabs wrote:

Would you lose too much fee revenue going Monero only, or Monero+Litecoin?

Btc is about 2/3rd , Xmr 1/3rd of all orders. So buyers might avoid a market without BTC. Also if Monero global usage increases, it will have the same high fees like bitcoin does.

The main issue described in the signed message probably needs to be resolved by having account balances stored in the market db for each buyer. So when they mess up payment, the market doesn't need to send the money back for them to try again. When the software was created, it was never envisaged that so many buyers would pay the wrong amount. But introducing account balances on the market significantly reduces security of the funds.

Blastncruise · 2023-03-18 16:20

I always try to overpay by around 5-10$ to cover any potential decreases during processing. To me this is easy to justify...the prices here are good, the whole service is good, and well fuck me we are purchasing illegal shit afterall. Its disappointing that the main problem boils down to tight arses and the ignorant.

East-Island-Addicts · 2023-03-18 22:20

I have seen it handled through a rewards system. Essentially you charge buyers a little bit more to cover the high fees at all times (even when fees are low) and issue them back reward points based on the remainder after fees. Once the buyers accumulated reward points become sizeable (say $30) you allow them to use it as a discount on their next order. Most sites call them [websitename] bucks or [websitename] gold.

theinterislander · 2023-03-19 05:50

we will be going to tor2door to start with and maybe branching out

PredatorLabs · 2023-03-19 09:50

TormarketSupport wrote:

PredatorLabs wrote:
Would you lose too much fee revenue going Monero only, or Monero+Litecoin?
Btc is about 2/3rd , Xmr 1/3rd of all orders. So buyers might avoid a market without BTC. Also if Monero global usage increases, it will have the same high fees like bitcoin does.
The main issue described in the signed message probably needs to be resolved by having account balances stored in the market db for each buyer. So when they mess up payment, the market doesn't need to send the money back for them to try again. When the software was created, it was never envisaged that so many buyers would pay the wrong amount. But introducing account balances on the market significantly reduces security of the funds.

I always assumed non-technical buyers were just placing an order and buying from easy-crypto whatever the system told them to buy, e.g. X.XXX BTC or X.XX LTC, and that it wouldn't matter much what exactly the system told them to buy. And that technically savvy guys wouldn't mind swapping their cryptos on kucoin, tradeogre, sideshift etc. But fair point, I don't have the experience from your side of things either.

Hope the upgrade doesn't take too long! Being a vendor here might be the only job I've ever been good at or enjoyed
Cheers,
P L

NzBenzo · 2023-03-19 20:40

TormarketSupport wrote:

The bonds will all be paid back in April once orders finalized.
Thank you for the feedback. It was a difficult decision but hopefully we are at the start of a bitcoin bull run and from past experience of the last bull run, tx fees made it really hard to run the market. Not sure what the solution is long term other than everyone using Lightning instead of on-chain btc.

Thank you so much for the effort you put in over the last 5 years! On behalf of my team and customers thank you for all you have done. We hope to see you soon and you can sort out how to move forward safely.

Thanks team!
NZBenzo

MollyShop · 2023-03-20 09:40

We're setting up on Tor2Door and Incognito and recommending other vendors do the same so that the community knows where to find everyone. They're not nearly as nice as TorMarket, but good enough to keep things going during the down-time.

I'll update once our new accounts are approved.

Also huge thanks to the incredible team that do an outstanding job on running the best DNM!

Last edited by MollyShop (2023-03-20 11:30)

CanadaGoodies · 2023-03-20 16:30

Hello,

With Tor closing for 2-6 months. We appreciate your business and support over the years and would like to let you know that you can continue shopping from us on following markets:

- Abacus Market
- Archetyp Market
- ASAP Market
- Bohemia Market
- Incognito Market
- Kerberos Market
- Nemesis Market
- Royal Market
- Tor2Door
- ViceCity Market
- WeTheNorth (Canada Only)

Thank you again for continuing to do business with us, and we hope to see you soon on above mentioned markets

Best Regards,
CG

Last edited by CanadaGoodies (2023-03-21 15:10)

PredatorLabs · 2023-03-20 19:10

Will these forums stay up while Tor Market is down?

SnakeVenom · 2023-03-27 17:30

Sucks to see TorMarket go, I hate these bigger sites. Hopefull you guys come back soon with a fresh site

TormarketSupport · 2023-03-30 17:50

URLs will remain the same in future. There might be scammers that copy the site HTML and bring up a copy of the market saying its back on a new URL.

Do not trust any messages not signed with the tormarket pgp key.

The database will retain all the vendor feedback and stats in future. The autodelete code (for orders & messages) will be turned off by the market and be inactive on the future site for a while, so you don't need to change your autodelete settings if you want to preserve this data.

If you have 2FA enabled, ensure the pgp key doesn't expire this year or disable 2FA just before the site goes offline. 2FA prevents login when the key is expired. Your key expiry date is shown on your profile page.

The easiest way to handle bond refunds is for you to enable automatic payments. In April , once all the orders in your account are finalized, the bond order will be refunded and funds will go where automatic payments configured.

New orders will stop on April 1st UTC. The site might keep running most of April - depends on how long any disputes take to resolve. The rrlm2 onion may get turned off before the other URLs since that is expensive to run and DOS attacks always target that URL. A news post will give some days notice before the site goes totally offline.

Forums site - is expected to stay running. If it has to close for some reason that would be announced. The process of obtaining "verified vendor" labels on accounts will change - not sure how yet.

Blastncruise · 2023-03-30 19:30

Thats awesome, good news all round.

tackle · 2023-04-01 14:30

Chance of reopening good? We just got product to relist

sumdots69 · 2023-04-03 18:00

Can anyone advise what currency tor2door is displaying , and any way to change that to NZ$ Sorry for being a lazy noob , just wanting to make sure what I'm looking at and figure one of you pros will have a couple tips ....may be ? TIA.

theinterislander · 2023-04-04 06:00

it doesnt have an option for NZD but incognito does

sumdots69 · 2023-04-05 19:00

Ie

Last edited by sumdots69 (2024-01-07 17:10)

TormarketSupport · 2023-04-06 20:30

Still progressing with the bond refunds. For very old bond orders a known bug in the market payment code, that was fixed a while ago, is preventing the payment data getting sent to the payment server. Currently fixing those bonds now which involves finding the btc address paid originally. Then the refund will go through.

The remainder of the more recently bought bonds should get refunded Friday or over the weekend.

A support ticket will get sent confirming once the bond refund has been scheduled for payment.

Note: if you are expecting a bond refund, you need to turn on automatic payments otherwise the script will not refund the bond.

Last edited by TormarketSupport (2023-04-06 20:30)

Pungsnigel · 2023-04-07 07:50

This is sad news.. TOR is by far the best. Incognito market is close to useless and the deposits takes up to 24 hours.

TormarketSupport · 2023-04-08 14:20

The bond refund script refunded a lot of bonds yesterday. If you are still waiting for a bond refund it means you have orders that are not completed ( ie paid, accepted, shipped, refund requested) or the automatic payments are not configured. It will keep running each day refunding bonds that meet these conditions.

The script didn't send a success ticket notification after all.

m92fs · 2023-05-27 18:20

What market did everyone move to ?

Cooked · 2023-05-28 13:10

Hey @TormarketSupport,

How is progress coming along with modifications to the code for Tor Market v2.0? I remember the prospective offline duration was 2-6x months. Do you have a better idea now of how long the market will need to be offline, or when it will likely come back online rather.

Cheers
Cooked

TormarketSupport · 2023-05-31 22:10

Nothing has been done yet but the plan is to upgrade the CSS, have a dark style option, better layouts. Will look at what other market features are lately and try keep up with what they offer, as the code was mostly written five years ago. Will need a way to make BTC payments less difficult for the market - looks like Incognito solution was to put a BTC tax of 2.5% on purchases. Probably won't have the changes done until around October, late 2023.

So Long, Marianne · 2023-05-31 23:40

I like tor2doors autoencrypt with sellers pgp feature. The more opsec oriented users would want to do it themselves, but its still a nice feature for casual buyers. I cant remember if tor market had that feature or not.

simplefish · 2023-06-10 13:30

Tor Market would let you auto encrypt your message with there PGP key but if the site was ever busted LE would be able to decrypt all the messages, So its safer to just thak the extra 30 seconds to encrypt with the vendors key.

TormarketSupport · 2023-06-11 22:20

The reason auto-encrypt is unsafe is if market is hacked and admins don't notice, during this time the attacker can save all the submitted data which is plaintext. Also the market could be taken over be LE like what happened to Hansa market and LE ran the market harvesting all the buyers postal addresses.

Note: all the historical orders prior to a hack/takeover would be safe because the market doesn't log submitted postal addresses.

Blastncruise · 2023-06-12 20:30

TormarketSupport wrote:

The reason auto-encrypt is unsafe is if market is hacked and admins don't notice, during this time the attacker can save all the submitted data which is plaintext. Also the market could be taken over be LE like what happened to Hansa market and LE ran the market harvesting all the buyers postal addresses.
Note: all the historical orders prior to a hack/takeover would be safe because the market doesn't log submitted postal addresses.

Ive now used a couple other markets, and from a user perspective they suck ass. TorMarket was always quick to log onto, pages loaded quickly, the search function was good, vendor and product pages were detailed...I could go on. All I can hope is that despite the "behind the scenes" changes youre wanting to make, you still dont stray too far from sonething that did operate really fuking well.

TormarketSupport · 2023-06-14 23:50

It should stay mostly the same in functionality, simple and minimal, trying to keep the database very small. Fast loading, and ability to login and order without hassle so placing an order should only take a couple of minutes. The CSS library was out of date and needs updating and it's important it works well on phones.
Some markets like Incognito have too much stuff on screen and heaps of code for unnecessary features which increases the attack surface (more features mean more security bugs likely).

Secretchiefs · 2023-06-15 06:10

Please can we pretty please request a jabber / xmpp feed for vendors

homegrownNZ · 2023-07-08 08:30

how do we verify ourselves as a vendor on here

PredatorLabs · 2023-08-03 01:20

Any idea on ETA? Still up to ~3 months away?

MonkeyBoyWW · 2023-08-08 22:50

PredatorLabs wrote:

Any idea on ETA? Still up to ~3 months away?

Where can i contact you for an order other than Tor2Door?

simplefish · 2023-08-20 18:50

How much longer ?

DryBugs · 2023-09-03 12:10

It's a matter of taste, but what I loved about TM was it was clean and simple. Just white background, no special sidebars, no popups, easy to get text you need to copy in a simple little box like PGP keys etc. You try Incognito or Archetyp, and they look slick as fuck compared to TM, but TM was just .... there. Nothing try-hard, nothing unnecessary, no fucking around with wallets or anything. You could try and make it better, the reality would be worse, I hope it stays that way.

Last edited by DryBugs (2023-09-03 12:10)

homegrownNZ · 2023-09-13 18:00

still no updates when tm will be online?

Last edited by homegrownNZ (2023-09-13 18:00)

v3 · 2023-09-14 14:40

She's done a runner mate. Retired a (crypto) millionaire

TucoSalamanca · 2023-09-21 05:50

The same thought had crossed my mind too given the media attention. Surely though the mods would have just said so then? Why leave everyone grasping on?

Wouldnt mind my bond back... not that its a heap of $ but it all counts....

CannabisChameleon · 2023-09-22 08:20

TucoSalamanca wrote:

Wouldnt mind my bond back... not that its a heap of $ but it all counts....

They already did pay everyone's bonds out. You probably missed out if you didn't claim it before the site shut down.

wtcmarket · 2023-09-24 18:10

Would just like to say if someone's looking for a new market, WTC is open now.
Currently just looking for more vendors to post their products, would love to be a part of this whole NZ community, get a few trusted vendors from here to sign up, no bond or fee. You can find the link on Dread.

MES · 2023-09-26 13:00

Sure do hope he comes back, i got a few nicely cured ounces from last year to share, TM was the by far the best site i ever used!

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