Department of Mathematics, City, University of London, London, EC1V 0HB, UK.
Chainalysis Inc, New York, NY, USA.
Sci Rep. 2020 Nov 2;10(1):18827. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-74416-y.
Dark web marketplaces are websites that facilitate trade in illicit goods, mainly using Bitcoin. Since dark web marketplaces are unregulated, they do not offer any user protection, so police raids and scams regularly cause large losses to marketplace participants. However, the uncertainty has not prevented the proliferation of dark web marketplaces. Here, we investigate how the dark web marketplace ecosystem reorganises itself following marketplace closures. We analyse 24 separate episodes of unexpected marketplace closure by inspecting 133 million Bitcoin transactions among 38 million users. We focus on "migrating users" who move their trading activity to a different marketplace after a closure. We find that most migrating users continue their trading activity on a single coexisting marketplace, typically the one with the highest trading volume. User migration is swift and trading volumes of migrating users recover quickly. Thus, although individual marketplaces might appear fragile, coordinated user migration guarantees overall systemic resilience.
暗网市场是专门从事非法商品交易的网站，主要使用比特币进行交易。由于暗网市场不受监管，它们不为用户提供任何保护，因此警方的突袭和诈骗经常导致市场参与者遭受巨大损失。然而，这种不确定性并没有阻止暗网市场的扩散。在这里，我们研究了暗网市场生态系统在市场关闭后如何重新组织自己。我们通过检查 3800 万用户之间的 1.33 亿比特币交易，分析了 24 个单独的暗网市场意外关闭事件。我们关注的是“迁移用户”，即在关闭后将其交易活动转移到另一个市场的用户。我们发现，大多数迁移用户继续在单个共存的市场上进行交易，通常是交易量最大的市场。用户迁移迅速，迁移用户的交易量迅速恢复。因此，尽管个别市场可能看起来脆弱，但用户的协调迁移保证了整体系统的弹性。
