Updated June 5th, 2019
Empire Market currently ranks in the top 3 position of biggest darknet marketplaces. Having said that, it is on the road to become one of the largest dark web marketplaces in the future.
Thats why we think its important to give our users solid information about empire so that they know what has made this marketplace so popular among masses of people.
Empire Market Intro
The development work for Empire Market in late 2017 after the seizure of alphabay. The admin started to share their updates about marketplace on reddit branding themselves as an alternative market to alphabay. The original project was called as Omega Bay Market but later changed their name to Empire.
The market was launched in early 2018. The launch received mixed reviews from critics. At that time Dream Market had taken the top spot, So the Empire didnt gain much attention. But the admins were committed with their marketplace and kept it online and periodically added different new features to attract users.
Look And Feel
The Empire Market was launched as an alphabay alternative so their main approach was to give their users the same look and feel that alphabay had so they can feel right at home.
By adding same design and features Empire was able to achieve their objective. The marketplace looks and feels same like alphabay, some may say that its an AB clone. Yes that may be right but its all about giving users the same experience.
The market is not a 100% exact clone but rather using a similar design and interface. We can give 4/5 stars for its look and feel.
Banned Items
Empire believes in free trade of goods and services but that doesn’t mean that everyone is allowed to sell anything they want.
They have a very strict harm reduction policy which means that something that is harmful for humans must not be allowed for sale on their platform.
The sale of fentanyl is banned due to its harmful nature and its contributions to the deaths of hundreds of individuals. Child porn is also not allowed and strictly banned. Terrorist activities are strictly prohibited.
Empire Market Main Link
The main Empire Market link has been down for a quite a while due to ddos. The current live url is empiremktxgjovhm.onion This will redirect you to another live working url.
Empire Market Alternative Links
Empire market is constantly updating their alternate urls due to the current ddos situation. We have compiled a full list of all the current alternate links that can be found at our Empire Market page. Some of the links for you shown below.
- aogje75jzls4zblk.onion
- vx2y3j76zy3jgsuj.onion
- dgt267ab6akne6ql.onion
- ak73m6ju4hzbtnjv.onion
- qd7ii2z6he6rf5uj.onion
- uxdjw7p3qib6bml5.onion
- z25zyiilpicq5q67.onion
- 4jce7yaejrtwxz3c.onion
- aaxyl5ovuavkqd2v.onion
- qaxdovz23ccxii4g.onion
User Interface
Coming to the user, we can clearly see a touch of alphabay . The user interface is almost 90% identical to ab. They did a great job in recreating the same UI as AB which was very hard i guess.
The side bar with all the listings and sorting options make it stand out. The messaging system and notifications are great which reminds you of the glory days of alphabay. Empire has been constantly in touch with their user base so they are updating anything they feel that might improve the overall experience.
We have used and tested their UI. We will give it 4.5/5 star rating.
Listings
Empire has grown significantly after the announcement of Dream Market to Cease their operations. The listings have doubled in the last two months and the overall number of total listings has increased by 85% in the last 6 to 7 months.
It is obviously clear that Empire Market is a winner in this case. They have also 40 thousand listing which is more than any other market at the moment. More products means more choice for the users to choose from.
We will give 5 stars to Empire in this category.
Vendors
There is a huge selection of vendors on Empire. From drug dealers to fraud sellers, from guide sellers to travel vendors, You can any kind of vendor of your choice. The search feature is very good to find your favorite vendor.
On one side buyers have advantage to find their vendor of choice but on the other side vendors have their own benefits. Empire is offering vendor bond waivers to the established vendors and for new vendors, the vendor bond is only $300.
In this sector we highly believe that it deserves 5 stars rating.
Security and User Safety
Apart from giving a good user experience, Empire has also focused highly on security and safety of users. By offering safety features like pgp 2 factor authentication, users can safeguard their accounts from phishing attacks which are a common thing on darknet marketplaces now.
Empire has also taken care of users balance. By introducing pin for withdrawl reduces balance stealing. There is also rate limiting for withdrawl and a captcha word.
Multi signature is a very secure feature that halts the fears of exit scam. By implementing this secure feature, Empire has literally eliminated the chances of an exit scam by 95%.
5 stars again for user safety and security.
Payment Types and Currencies Accepted
Bitcoin is the main currency of every darknet, So we see it in action. The bitcoin will remain as the main currency of dark web. The empire has adopted it as its preferred currency but it also has given its users the ability to use alternate crypto currencies like bitcoin cash, etherium, monero and zcash etc.
Although there are few people that use anything except bitcoin for their darknet related purchases but giving them extra options doesnt hurt. It builds user confidence.
Empire has also added multi currency feature to browse products in their users native currencies and pay at the check out with bitcoin/other crypto currencies using current exchange rates updated every 15 minutes.
This will also fetch empire 4.7 stars ratings and even more.
Empire Market Buyer’s Guide
Empire market is very similar to ab, So same buyer experience can be expected. The buying process is fairly simple. We will describe it in a few simple steps so that you know how to buy from Empire market safely without any problems whatsoever.
- Register yourself and save your mnemonic & pin in a secure place.
- Go to your profile page enable pgp 2fa and pin for purchase. If you dont know anything about pgp then read our easy pgp tutorial to get you started within 5 minutes.
- Find your favorite product by navigating the side bar or using the search field located on the upper side of the page.
- Checkout the product descriptions, user reviews and vendor’s rating (on vendor profile page).
- Now you are almost set for your first purchase but hold on, you havent deposited any coins yet. So head over to wallet page, copy your bitcoin address and send the coins to this address. Wait for 3 confirmations before the amount shows up in your account.
- Now you can complete your purchase. Dont forget to encrypt your order details using pgp.
Ddos on Empire Market
Ddos also known as distributed denial of service attack, is a kind of attack that disrupts a website by sending fake traffic to its servers address.
As you all know that dark web is suffering from these kind of attack from day one. Be it from the competitor market or from a government entity, the reason is clear they want to bring down the service so that it cant be accessible by anyone.
Empire market has found a beautiful way or you may say a work around which uses a redirection method. It had proven to be effective. You can find the main redirect link at our Empire market alternative links page.
Market Support
Empire Market has a very organized support system which is divided in three departments.
- Account Support
- Dispute Support
- Forum Support Team
Account Support
Account supports resolves most of the problems related to the user’s account. They are actively working to resolve blocked/phished account. Making the user’s account recovery easy by using the mnemonic function. Sometimes withdrawls are blocked or not working so they are also resolved by the same team.
Dispute Support Staff
Working with disputes is a very serious work which needs patience and intelligence to resolve disputes so that the decision is very balanced and doesnt hurt the innocent party.
Dispute resolution and banning serial scammers is a very serious job that needs to be handled with care. Empire has proven to be extremely successful in this field.
Thats why we dont see any bad reviews about their resolution support staff.
Forum Support Team
The duty of forum support team is to ensure the forum is run clean from spammers and scammers.
Keeping the forum clean from spammers is a tough job, So empire has hired a good amount of forum mods that work round the clock to make the forum a great place for user interaction.
Note: We must add that forum is currently down due to ddos attacks.
Forum Review
Empire has a very big ab style forum. There are lots o good resources that can be found on it. Mostly forum contains mix of fraud and drugs dicussions.
The forum is a good place to share and talk about current markets situation, find out about any vendor scamming or anything scamming related, help can also be sought from forum mods.
As we speak the forum is down due to ddos attacks and we don’t believe that Empire has time to revive the forum.
Market Availability & Stats
Empire market is using a very novel and creative way of keeping their market reachable to everyone. By employing a url redirect method, they are able to keep their website alive successfully without having any significant down times. The method works by redirecting legit traffic to their empire market mirror link and dropping the malicious traffic, this way they are able to keep themselves alive for way longer than any other market.
Darknetstats have been keeping an eye on empire market for almost a year now, Our availability tracker shows that empire has a 91.1% availability in the last 12 months which is way better than the rest of the markets. We have also created a table for you to see their stats in the form of a table. This table can also be accessed at our Markets Chart and Empire Market page.
| Item type | Detailed Stats |
|---|---|
| Name | Empire Market |
| Established | Around April-2018 |
| Main url | empiremktxgjovhm.onion |
| Support Multisig | Yes |
| Security Issues | None |
| Active Warnings | None |
| 2 Factor Authentication | Available |
| Finalize Early | Yes (for trusted vendors) |
| Commission | N/A |
| Vendor Bond | $300 |
| Forced Vendor Pgp | Yes |
| Total Listings | 37.7k (as of june 2019) |
| Business volume (weekly) | 1 million dollars per week (estimated) |
| Current Status | Active |
Subreddit
The days of reddit are gone when markets used to have dedicated subreddits.
Today Law enforcement are stricter than ever. The biggest darknet community subreddit r/darknetmarkets is closed. All the related subreddits are gone, So no one should expect Empire’s presence on reddit.
Our Rating
- Look and Feel – 4 Stars
- User Interface – 4.5 Stars
- Listing – 5 Stars
- Vendors – 5 Stars
- Security & User Safety – 5 Stars
- Payment & Currencies – 4.7 Stars
- Ddos Handling – 5 Stars
- Forum Availability – 2 Stars
Thanks guys for reading our detailed Empire Market review. We invite you to explore our more for latest Darknet, Security and Hacking related news and views