DrugHub Market is from the team behind legendary darknet market known as White House Market, which closed in late 2021 having spent a considerable amount of time as the world's number 1 market following the take down of Dark Market roughly one year earlier. White House Market was one of a small number of markets to close peacefully and provided users with 11 days to complete all business and make any withdrawals before going offline. Just like White House Market, DrugHub aims to prioritize user safety and security. But with a vastly different layout, how will be the user experience be? As always, Torhoo will take a detailed look.
Disclaimer: By using Fish Market for any form of transaction, you may be committing an illegal act in your country. The information provided here is for educational and research purposes and is not intended to promote any illegal activity. Any actions you choose to take are 100% your own responsibility.
Creating an account is very easy and straight forward. Simply choose a username and password, then enter a referral code. Upon completing the sign up process, a mnemonic code is provided in case you need to recover from account in future due to a forgotten password. Once this is created, you can then proceed to login.
Fish Market Link (Primary onion URL):http://gofishbybookb4a2kvviuygmwjqfxx7nqsovweogs2cxvqvexhe7edyd.onion
Primary I2P URL: http://gofish4u4oxk3mxf3d252jvmvbkepczrydxw3x5zixgwfduuqq3q.b32.i2p
Online since: December 2022
Cryptos accepted: Monero (XMR) only
Multisig support? No
Walletless? Yes
(optional)
Vendor bond: 1.5 XMR
Key features: PGP 2-FA, Escrow, Auctions, Fundraisers,
Speed setting (for slow connections), Auto-refunds, Casino Games
Categories: Drugs, Software,
Forgeries, Defense
Once logged in, you'll find yourself on the main landing page which contains links to all the different features including the most viewed product of the day and a range of live casino games.
The rules on Fish are simple and no nonsense. No CP, scams, guns, harm to others. No posting of external
links. No external contact details. Nothing objectionable or out of the ordinary here.
Vendors can
join without a fee if they are established and there is a 3% fee for sellers which can drop as low as
2.5%. This means Go Fish has some of the lowest fees of any market we've seen to date. Presumably this
is down to them having a more diverse range of revenue streams such as the casino games, which we'll
go into more detail about below.
Fish Market Rules / Merchant conditions:
To carry out a search on Fish Market, you can either use the search box on the landing page, or alternatively select a category. From there you can narrow down your search using keywords and filter by shipping to location. This does mean you have fewer search options than many other markets, but that's not to say you can't still find what you're looking for, given that location and category are typically the most important factors in a search. It would be nice to be able to see some additional filters though, and hopefully these may be added in the future. It is pleasing however that you can filter out inactive merchants, to save wasting time looking through 'dead' listings.
The search results will show you a product description, shipping from location, price (in local currency) and the name of the vendor. If a product has previous feedback ratings, this will also be shown.
Product and vendor information are very visible within each listing page, and you can easily message a vendor from here if you have any additional product queries. Forced and automatic PGP encryption is in place for maximum safety. You'll find a picture of the product, a description, plus details about shipping, price etc.
Past buyer feedback is visible at the bottom of the listing. This uses a star rating system from 1 to 5 (with 5 being the best) and factors in value, quality and stealth. Buyers can also leave comments.
You can also view information about a specific merchant by clicking on their name (on the right hand side of the listing). This tells you how many completed trades they have, when they last logged in, their terms of trade, and PGP key. Unfortunately, there's no ability to view feedback across an entire vendor's product range, so you have to check against individual products.
Ready to make a purchase? Fish Market allows you to add products from multiple different sellers to your basket and then check them out at the same time, making the purchasing system more like that of Amazon. You can either deposit to a market wallet first, or pay an invoice after the checkout stage. Monero is the only crypto supported, and given that this is generally considered one of the most secure cryptos (with very low fees), this can only be a positive.
If you prefer to deposit to a market wallet, do this first then select 'Pay from balance' at the
checkout. If you're opting for walletless pay (recommended since it avoids issues with crypto
fluctuation) just go direct to the checkout and select the 'Generate XMR invoice' option.
If
you do choose to deposit to a market wallet first, you must first be PGP verified. It is stated that this
is to prevent phishing attacks. Paying via invoice post-checkout has no such PGP requirement however. When
depositing via wallet, you are asked exactly how much you want to deposit, then issued with an invoice for
this amount, for which you need to make payment within 1 hour. One other feature worth briefing mentioning
is the ability to send XMR direct to another GoFish account, which is fast and easy and great if you want
to send funds to a friend or alternate account.
Regardless of which payment option you choose, the
system is very fast to detect your deposit and tells you how many confirmations have been processed in
almost real-time, so this provides reassurance as a user that your deposit is on its way. This system
automatically refreshes every 60 seconds, making it significantly more responsive than any other market
we've come across to date.
Before making a cryptocurrency deposit, be sure you're not on a phishing site (check your onion
link against those listed on Torhoo or one of the other sites recommended by Fish Market, such as Tor.Fish). Whilst not mandatory, we also recommend adding an XMR refund address, so if Fish goes down for any
reasons (e.g. sustains a DDOS attack or suffers a major system failure), the administrators will be able
to refund your account. Any account which hasn't logged in for 6 months will automatically be
refunded any outstanding funds. A nice touch!
When entering in your shipping details, we strongly
recommend PGP encrypting yourself for maximum security. If you're not yet familar with PGP
encryption, we have a detailed guide on how to use PGP. Fish Market also provides a range of 50+ guides to which includes the use of PGP on Windows and Tails,
so in this respect it is very noob friendly. The vendor's PGP key is made available on the checkout
screen for maximum convenience, so there's no excuse not to.
Once confirmed and submitted, the
order will show in your 'Orders' menu.
You have the option to cancel an order if the vendor does not accept within 3 hours. Once the vendor accepts, ships or cancels the order, you will receive a notificaton in the messages area.
The escrow window is 10 days by default, but you are encouraged to receipt once your order has arrived. At this point you can then mark it as received and leave feedback for the buyer.
In the event of an issue, you can raise a dispute. These can be self-settled if both parties can come to agreement (such as a 50/50 split), but in the event this isn't possible, a moderator will make the final decision. We always advise contacting the merchant in the first instance to try and resolve any issues before resorting to using the dispute process however.
In the event of a dispute, customers and vendors can make offers to each other and attempt to come to an agreement. This is designed to make the process as fast and amicable as possible. In the event that this isn't possible, an administrator will then intervene.
One innovative method of selling that Fish Market offers is auctions. Merchants can create auctions for products an services which take place for up to 14 days. Reserve prices can also be set. These can be made either private (only accessible via direct link) or public, so anyone on the market can view and bid.
Bidders will need to pay a small deposit in order to bid. This is calculated as a percentage of the previous bid. For example, the last bid was $100 at 5%; the security deposit is $5. Once they are no longer the highest bidder, the deposit will be refunded. The default is no deposit required to bid.
This offers the opportunity to crowdfund is a Kickstarter or GoFundMe type way, except using
cryptocurrency, and on the darknet. This of course opens up a range of possibilities that wouldn't be
possible on traditional clearnet fundraising sites. A fundraiser can be public or private (accessible only
via shareable link). Anyone can make a fundraiser, you don't need to be a vendor. Simply fill out a
form providing details of your proposal, and set a target and campaign length. Here's what Fish says
about the feature:
Have you been deplatformed elsewhere? We believe the free market is the ultimate
arbitrator. Who would seek to get funded? Someone who is trying to raise money that is politcal in nature.
A distributor may wish to expand but isn't well funded. Raise money here and offer backers a return on
their investment. Standard protocol, no harm to self or others, no CP, etc. Self-doxxing for credibility
is up to the organizer. Keep campaigns and comments civil.
Once your fundraiser is live, you can
monitor progress in the 'Fundraiser' menu and you'll receive updates as donations come in.
As well as being a market and fundraiser platform, Fish Market also offers a range of casino games for
which you can stake XMR. All are relatively easy to get the hang of. The games on offer are:
Dice
roll - Guess combinations of 4 dice and try to beat the house for a jackpot.
Coin flip - Try to guess which way the coin will drop. Win a prize if you get it right 4 times in a row or more, and up to 80% of the jackpot pool if you can get it right 7 times in a row.
Catfish bingo - This is essentially tote betting with a twist. Back your favorite and if its wins, you take a share of the winnings from the losers. Your winning share is based on how much you bet vs others. The twist comes if the game flips. The winning pick becomes the losing pick and pays all other options. If nobody picks the correct option, all bets are refunded. The 'flip' is randomized based on the total number of options. More options, less chance of it flipping. For example, 3 choices give a 1 in 3 chance of being flipped. When 5 choices, 1 in 5 chance of flipping.
A large number of unique and innovative features
Low fees at just 3% for sellers (dropping as low
as 2.5%), and 1% for buyers
Ability to checkout and pay for multiple items from different sellers
all at once
Real-time updates during the deposit / payment process
Fewer advanced search options than many rival markets
Feedback cannot be viewed by vendor, only by
individual product Feature added!
It's clear the team behind Fish Market don't simply want to be just 'another market' and have done things their own way, with many unique and innovative features. When a platform has had some much time and attention dedicated to its development, it's generally a safe bet that the team behind it will be in it for the long haul, so don't expect to see Fish exiting any time soon. On that basis, we can certainly recommend it to vendors and buyers alike, and we very much look forward to seeing what further developments the team make in the future.
