Established in October 2018, Nightmare was dark web market enabling users to buy and sell various types of illicit products using cryptocurrency.
The service was started to fill the void left by bigger markets that had either fallen as a result of scams, seizures or hacks by law enforcement and so they administrators wanted to bring new hope to the community by creating Nightmare.
Nightmare however banned Products- fentanyl, weapons, Trading of any products within russia and pornography
Total listings: Unknown
Total Vendors: Unknown
Back then, the viable alternatives were Dream and WallStreet, which are no more.
In its time in operation, Nightmare grew to become the biggest market in the darknet surpassing Empire, Cannazon, Apollon, Cryptonia and others.
However, due to misunderstanding among the administrators, the marketplace is said to have pulled an exit scam in July 2018.
The Long Story Short
It all started when a particular drug vendor known as StrongWeed took to Dread to complain of an issue with Bitcoin withdrawals. The vendor lamented that on July 7, he/she initiated a withdrawal of 1BTC, and the transaction has not yet been processed after several days.
A day later, other users started complaining of similar issues in sending cryptocurrencies, and their balances were not updating.
Well, the problem was a cause for concern with others suggesting that market users have been phished because the issue is indeed a problem within the darknet.
After a while, there was an increase in the number of complaints and a new picture came into place with some suggesting that the market is in the process of pulling an exit scam or either, there is a serious issue with the payment system. Everyone had something different to say.
With more complains coming in, an admin of the market called Sandman had to intervene to cool the situation. In a comment, the admin told users not to worry because there is a technical issue on the side of the market and they are working to have it done
In its eight months in operation, Nightmare showed the darknet community that it is capable of doing what very few can do. Its team was full of innovation that they had features not seen before.
Hacks
Since it started, Nightmare market has fallen victim to hacks but most have been mitigated. But in April, May, June the market was hit by severe DDoS attacks that caused it to have some serious downtime.
The DDoS attacks not only attacked Nightmare but many other forums and services on the darknet.
The hacker was demanding thousands of dollars in BTC in order to stop, but not all markets cooperated. It remains unclear whether Nightmare or any other market bowed into the demands of the attacker.
Cryptocurrencies in Use
Nightmare is one of those markets that took things to a whole new level. When the site was still new, it had already integrated six cryptocurrencies a number that would have some people wondering.
The virtual currencies in user were Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Monero, Litecoin, Dash, and Zcash.
Notable Features
Inbuilt shufflers- Service enable users to have their coins shuffled to avoid third parties from tracing them.
If a user decides to use multi-signature escrow and their vendor supports it, they will be sending their coins directly to the 2/3 P2SH address (where coins remain for the duration of the escrow).
Standard security users have come to expect and trust: 2-factor authentication, PIN-required for withdrawal, PGP-encrypted messaging.
Hidden usernames. That is to say, the account username is different from the one displayed on the market. This was to prevent basic brute-force attacks and user-enumeration.
Autoshop for digital items
Live Jabber notifications- users of the site could register for a Jabber account on the market server, using their market username, via the standard port (5222), and they will instantly be updated with relevant notifications.
The notifications include order updates, new listings, announcement, ticket responses, balance updates among others.
20% commission on the affiliate programs.
