How Darknet Markets Fought for Users After Hydra’s Collapse

Four of the top five highest-earning darknet markets in 2022 were conventional, drug-focused darknet markets, while just one, Brian Dumps, was a fraud shop. As we’ll explore later, the three next-highest earning markets of the year — Mega Darknet Market, Blacksprut Market, and OMG!OMG! While darknet markets have largely recovered after Hydra’s closure and fraud shops have not, single vendor shops showed a different pattern. Throughout 2022, we observed a negative relationship between funds sent to regular darknet markets and those sent to single vendor shops. The two charts below show which markets Hydra’s previous counterparties used the most in both of those two time periods.