Evolution Marketplace Staff Speak: We are growing fast!

Posted by: DeepDotWeb

May 10, 2014

So it seems that as more people are posting threads agaist the interviewers, more people are seeking to do them, this time we had the REAL pleasure of interviewing Boogie – The PR representative of the Evolution marketplace.  Beside the fact that he was a fun person to interview he helped to clear out some common misconceptions about Evolution (refereed to as Evo in the interview), Which is important as its the fourth largest market today in the DarknetMarkets Scene.

Evolution Marketplace:  http://k5zq47j6wd3wdvjq.onion

Evo = Evolution Market
TCF = Tor Carding forum

DeepDotWeb: So you are the next one that want to put himself in the line of fire with doing interviews? I see many are complaining about them on the forums.
Boogie: lol that is me :D i’ll be in the hotseat

DeepDotWeb: Who are you and what do you do? (On your Job of course…)
Boogie: I am Boogie and I am the public representative for evolution

DeepDotWeb: So how long you have been working for Evo? i have seen you around quite a lot since you started
Boogie: Oh yeah :) I’ve officially started working for them since last week, but im not new to evo by no means ive been part of the community since they opened up in January

DeepDotWeb: Can you tell about the history of Evolution? (for those how don’t know the story)
Boogie: sure thing Verto and his associates have been working on it for several months prior to opening. Verto is a true beiever in tor’s philosophy about about remaining anonymous and having an open market. Also he and all of us are aware of the nefarious people that are on the deep web as well. Those that constantly scam new comers. So we wanted to provide a open market where people can safely trade with an escrow.

DeepDotWeb: It came from the same people as TCF As i recall after being hacked?
Boogie: Yes. Verto is also the owner of TCF but keep in mind that Evo wasnt the solution to TCF being hijacked its been in the making long before that. TCF is its own site with its dealing, we try to keep evolution and tcf separate, as they have their own focuses

DeepDotWeb: Good thing that you say this cause its a common belief.
Boogie: I know, and we try to explain but you know how people are. “they want to believe in that”.

DeepDotWeb: What distinct Evolution from the so many other markets?
Boogie: Evo wasn’t a fly-by-night operation. The one big thing that evo has I believe is a very strong community, if you check out the forums they are very very active.

DeepDotWeb: The TCF community migrated there?
Boogie: Well at first it was like a refugee setup but now that tcf is back online, we wanted to remove the fraud discussion out of evo and back to tcf because that is not what evo is all about. evo is an open market and a safe place to conduct business, we advise others if they want to discuss fraud, then please do it at tcf. We want it to be an open playing field for all type of business and interests at evo. im terrible at explaining but i hope you understand :)

DeepDotWeb: This is what i wanted to ask anyway, many people consider Evolution as the marketplace for thief’s and fraudsters – that attracts much more heat from LE than the “normal” drugs-only markets, your thoughts about this?
Boogie: I find it funny, because there are other markets that deal in both drugs and fraud too such as the biggest one agora. but you never hear anything. it’s funny to me about how your background creates your image, but i tell you what, ask any of the customers and vendors at evo – all of them will tell you how stand-up we are and very responsive to their needs and that is far from the truth. We just want to provide a safe environment for people to do business, meet friends, and have fun.

DeepDotWeb: The important question as always – what makes you / the admins want to be interviewed, why is it a good thing to put your market in the spotlight?
Boogie: I feel this is a great way to get our name out there and to clear the air of any misunderstanding people may have about us. I don’t see it as much, but we were marred for our background and now most people do acknowledge us for what we are. Another market that wants to thrive and prosper :D And be the place everyone loves to go to and just have fun. No drama or nothing like that

DeepDotWeb: You are a talented PR guy :)
Boogie: Thank you my friend :) I love this job because I love meeting people, not just to conduct business but to cut up as well lol

DeepDotWeb: How much you get paid (~around) for that? i know you guys working for the markets doing endless hours
Boogie: I’ll say this, it’s enough that I am more than content with but cannot live off. I am happy with it. but its not about the pay, I’ve know those guys for a long time and I find them to be more then my bosses but my friends too. but I find it more as a fun thing to do with my friend ya know.

DeepDotWeb: What about the markets features – what makes it safe to use / better than the others?
Boogie: I feel that the staff are very adamant about making evo as one of the safest markets, they are always adding new features, updates, making the servers run smooth, and now just added multisig due to popular demand. We have yet had any types of attacks/exploits on the market and even provide bug bounties to those who find an issue.

DeepDotWeb: Are you enforcing PGP encryption or have PGP / 2FA login?
Boogie: We do have 2fa as an option for logging in, pgp is enforced for vendors only. we find it unnecessary to enforce it on buyers, We don’t want to restrict anyone to access our market, so we leave it to the vendor’s discretion whether or not to deal with a customer who does not have a pgp key.

DeepDotWeb: What is the size of the market (how many listings / users) and its growth?
Boogie: Right now we have ~38000 users with an average of 500-1000 new signups per day, drug listings are over 4000, and for the others I gotta double check but they are surely growing, I find it quite an accomplishment given our short time on tor.

DeepDotWeb: Its impressive i think its the fourth one after SR2 / Pandora / Agora.
Boogie: Thank you :) that’s what we aim for a place that everyone love to go to while surfing the deep web, and we’ve been getting a surge of new users recently. Especially as more find out about tor.

DeepDotWeb: What are the vendor bonds / fees / FE policy / Scammers status on Evo?
Boogie: Great thing is that there are no vendor fees to register, we want to give the new vendors a chance with out needing the extra capital to get started. However dont think we arent wise to scammers thinking they can easily set up shop and rip people off, ooh no, our FE policy is a very unique one – no one can ask for FE until they meet our requirements listed in our wiki, or if they have legacy sales on a previous market they can prove. As for scammers, sadly they do exist just as everywhere in life. So we set up the FE barrier but we also educate those on how to protect themselves because there is so much a market can do to protect you.
We actively seek them out and ask the community to do so as well, you gotta use your instinct so we try hard to educate those on how they can protect themselves.

DeepDotWeb: And what are the commissions on the site?
Boogie: As for the commision. it starts out at 4%, but its on a sliding scale based on how much you earn, the more you earn the lower your commission becomes all the way down to 2.5%

DeepDotWeb: Can you tell me about some interesting / funny experiences you had as a market employee with buyers or vendors…?
Boogie: lol they funnest i have is calling out scammers, i love to do it. Okay here is one: some asshole comes on evo trying to sell iphones and everyone in the forum is asking him to prove that you have that many phones to sell, so the kid finds a photo on google, photoshops a piece of paper with his name on it, and sets it up as his lising image. The best tool to use i find are google reverse image search and photo forensics i was able to look at the metadata and see it was photoshopped and found the image on Google the dumb bastard didnt know what to say lol so he got the ban hammer.
I must admit, i love being a vigilante.

DeepDotWeb: Haha there are probably ton of these stuff
Boogie: ohh yeah. its funny how they react when you call them out

DeepDotWeb: Ever had any encounter with (or suspected) LE on the markets?
Boogie: Honestly, not that I am aware of. but I am a firm believer that you should treat everyone as if they are LE, and keep a good opsec, That way you’re always careful. I wouldnt doubt there are LE in evo.

DeepDotWeb: Something that we learned from SR is that being even a forum moderator is extremely dangerous. Aren’t you afraid?
Boogie: Nah cant be that way, it hinders your actions of what you need to do, plus, I love sticking it to the man, lol. Not to sound cocky. But honestly, just keep your wit and stay safe.

DeepDotWeb: Got any Tip for the market users to make their stay and usage safer?
Boogie: Yes, please read the street smarts on TOR post in Reddit on either evolution or DNM. Also remember, if it’s too good to be true, it probably is :)

DeepDotWeb: Anything else we did not mention that you would like to add?
Boogie: Yes, Evolution is always looking for new ways to improve and we always love hearing your suggestions, critique, and comments. Never be afraid to contact either me or anyone else. Thank you all :)

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We would like to thank Boogie for his time and the interview, and he hope to see more market using multisg transactions and growing in a way that is still keeping their users safe and happy.

Updated: 2014-05-10