Empire Darknet Marketplace Shuts Down Unexpectedly

Earlier this week, Bleeping Computer reported issues with the Empire marketplace on the darknet. The problems began over the previous weekend when Empire went offline for more than 48 hours. Concerned users blamed a DDoS attack and suspected an exit scam. The site’s main moderator, Se7en, expressed hope that administrators would restore the site soon, and some users even managed to access the platform, though with great difficulty.

Anonymous Twitter journalist DarkDotFail also reported that, according to his sources, the marketplace suffered a severe DDoS attack, making Monero cryptocurrency transactions impossible. Bitcoin News published similar information, citing its own sources.

However, after a couple of days, Empire still hadn’t resumed operations. Se7en posted a new update, stating that the marketplace’s return now seemed unlikely, the moderator panel was still down, and the administrators were not responding on Jabber.

Moderator’s Perspective on the Shutdown

Se7en suggested that the Empire admins were simply tired of keeping the marketplace afloat. According to him, the site had been running on autopilot for the past six months, with increasingly limited contact between admins and moderators.

“For the last six months, the market was on autopilot, and no new features were added. I made various suggestions, like getting rid of PIN codes and using only PGP 2FA or XMR code verification to make Monero withdrawals more secure. Most of my suggestions were ignored. They used to listen to me more often. When the marketplace first started, it allowed weapons trading, but they dropped that after I strongly opposed Empire being involved with weapons,” Se7en explained.

Se7en does not believe this was an exit scam. In his view, the admins are not trying to disappear with users’ money, since in typical exit scams, admins continue accepting payments for weeks before vanishing completely. “If this was a planned exit scam, I don’t think they [the admins] would have made efforts to fix BTC withdrawals right before the end,” he wrote.

DDoS Attacks and Financial Strain

Se7en also accused user SchwererGustav of recent DDoS attacks on the site, claiming that SchwererGustav then extorted money from the Empire admins. Allegedly, the admins agreed to pay SchwererGustav around $10,000–$15,000 per week to keep the marketplace running. This arrangement put a significant financial strain on Empire, and when further DDoS attacks began, the admins likely decided to shut down the site.

Criticism of Tor Developers

The main moderator even blamed the Tor developers for not fixing vulnerabilities that made such attacks possible: “If the Tor team had fixed the issues that allow these attacks, I think the admins would have stuck around longer. The Tor staff know what needs to be done—specifically, adding PoW to the network. Maybe they’re working on it now, and it’s good to see them talking about PoW more often, but they’ve delayed this fix for years. I’ll go further: if the Tor developers had added PoW years ago, maybe even Dream Market would still be around.”

Losses for Users

It remains unclear whether the Empire admins disappeared with users’ funds, but many will definitely not recover the money they had deposited on the marketplace. Affected customers are now complaining that the admins didn’t even provide a grace period to withdraw their funds.

“I’m disappointed that the admins shut down the marketplace this way. I apologize to everyone who had money on deposit. My only advice is to use markets with MultiSig in the future, and only for large orders,” Se7en concluded.