Evolution was a

darknet market A darknet market is a commercial website on the Dark Web, dark web that operates via darknets such as Tor (anonymity network), Tor or I2P. They function primarily as black markets, selling or brokering transactions involving Illegal drug trade, dru ...

operating on the

Tor network Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. It directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network, consisting of more than seven thousand relays, to co ...

. The site was founded by an individual known as 'Verto' who also founded the now defunct

Tor Carding Forum The Tor Carding Forum (TCF) was a Tor-based forum specializing in the trade of stolen credit card details, identity theft and currency counterfeiting. The site was founded by an individual known as 'Verto' who also founded the now defunct Evol ...

. Evolution was active between 14th January 2014 and mid March 2015. Launched January 14, 2014, it saw rapid growth within its first several months, helped in part by law enforcement seizures of some of its competitors during the six-month-long investigation codenamed

Operation Onymous Operation Onymous was an international law enforcement operation targeting darknet markets and other hidden services operating on the Tor network. Background Operation Onymous was formed as a joint law enforcement operation between the Feder ...

. Speaking about why Evolution was not part of Operation Onymous, the head of the European police cybercrimes division said it was "because there's only so much we can do on one day." ''

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fran ...

'' estimated that it was one of the two largest drug markets. Evolution was similar to other darknet markets in its prohibitions, disallowing "child pornography, services related to murder/assassination/terrorism, prostitution, ponzi schemes, and lotteries". Where it most prominently differed was in its more lax rules concerning stolen credit cards and others kinds of fraud, permitting, for example, the wholesaling of credit card data. In mid-March 2015, administrators froze its users

escrow An escrow is a contractual arrangement in which a third party (the stakeholder or escrow agent) receives and disburses money or property for the primary transacting parties, with the disbursement dependent on conditions agreed to by the transacti ...

accounts, disallowing withdrawals, citing technical difficulties. Evolution had earned a reputation not just for its security, but also for its professionalism and reliability, with an

uptime Uptime is a measure of system reliability, expressed as the percentage of time a machine, typically a computer, has been working and available. Uptime is the opposite of downtime. It is often used as a measure of computer operating system rel ...

rate much higher than its competition. Partly for that reason, when the site went offline a few days later, on March 18, the user community panicked. The shut down was discovered to be an

exit scam An exit scam is a confidence trick where an established business stops shipping orders while receiving payment for new orders. If the entity had a good reputation, it could take some time before it is widely recognized that orders are not shipping ...

, with the operators of the site shutting down abruptly in order to steal the approximately $12 million in

bitcoin Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public di ...

s it was holding as escrow.

References

{{Tor hidden services Internet properties established in 2014 Defunct darknet markets Internet properties disestablished in 2015 Create:game now