What is Versus Market?
Versus Market is one of the largest all-purpose markets on the darknet. Not only will you find your typical drug selection but there is also a wide variety of other products such as counterfeit items, jewels and gold, software, carded items and many more. The market has a phishing protection systems that will always display information that you can check to make sure that you are not on a phishing site.
On Versus you don’t have to deposit money to your account. You can just pay for your purchases on checkout as you would do on any regular e-commerce that accepts crypto payments.
Simply search the market for your favorite items, place products on your shopping cart and when you are done just go ahead and pay for your orders. Versus will provide you with an invoice for your total purchase and all you need to do is to pay the EXACT amount to the wallet they provide you with.
A vendor has 72 hours to accept an order. After the order is accepted and processing, the vendor has 7 days to move it to shipped status. Most vendors will, and should, ship the order much sooner than the allotted 7 day timeframe, but Versus Market set that larger window of time for vendor side OPSEC.
Checkout occurs once you have selected the listing of your choice from your vendor’s shop. The product, with the appropriate quantity, will be added to your cart. From there, you will be asked to selection a shipping option and a payment option. Both of these items come from determinations that are preset by the vendor.
Versus Market will automatically generate an invoice for your order. Make sure to send the correct amount of cryptocurrency to the wallet address in your invoice. You will have a limited time to do so and if you fail to complete that, your order will automatically be canceled. Your vendor will not see or receive your order until you pay this invoice!
Now the proverbial ball is in the vendor’s court. The vendor can either choose to accept your order or decline it in which case you will be refunded to the refund address you provided in step #1 within an estimate time frame of six hours.
Your vendor will notify you through Versus’ transaction system when your product has shipped. Please remember to refence the Buyer’s Best Practices Guide as it relates to shipping time etiquette. Most vendors are overworked single man operations and same or next day shipping cannot always be guaranteed.
After a few days have passed and you’ve received your order, you’ve successfully completed your transaction on Versus Market – but wait, you are forgetting something! Your vendor who sent you the product a few days ago will not actually be paid until you finalize the order. This is why it is extremely important to finalize your order once you have received it and verified its contents. Be nice to your vendor and expect the same in return. Don’t wait until your 3 day weekend party binge ends to finalize the order you received Friday!
Once you finalize your order you will have the opportunity to leave feedback on your transaction experience, on the product you received and on the vendor overall. Remember, vendors thrive on feedback and customers rely on it. Leave a helpful and honest review! If there was a problem, don’t be afraid to say so – constructive criticism helps vendors improve and lets customers know in advance. If you had a great transaction, leave a nice and detailed comment. Vendors are business owners and customer feedback is what keeps them running.
Security Recommendations
Same as with all darknet sites the usual security recommendations apply. Most importantly: stay anonymous. Use the TOR browser only and don’t use the TOR browser for any regular (non-darknet) browsing.
Before visiting the site with the TOR browser, you should switch off JavaScript (Options -> Privacy & Security -> Security Level -> Switch to “Safer”). Versus Market is explicitly designed so that you don’t need JavaScript which allows you to increase your security by switching it off.
Ideally, you have a dedicated system or at least a dedicated VM for all your darknet activities. Keep your darknet PGP keys and other credentials limited to that system only, do not mix it with any activities that would expose your identity.
Treat your dedicated system like a work-system: Only install the software necessary for your operations do not install anything for entertainment or other purposes. Subsequently, resist the urge to browse Twitter, Reddit, or any other social media sites while you have downtime. For this always use your regular system.
For additional system security, we recommend you run a secure operating system like Tails or Whonix on your dedicated system for darknet activities. We also recommend using a VPN as an additional security measure since TOR will only anonymize your browsing sessions but not other traffic.
Especially when using any public WiFi hotspots you should always use a VPN when accessing the Internet since you don’t know whether the access point is compromised. A VPN ensures that all of your traffic, no matter what application, will always be strongly encrypted when passing the access point, this protecting yourself not only from eavesdropping but also possible identity theft.
Versus Market Summary
Versus Market is one of the best all-purpose markets around. Few sites have such a variety of products and are so easy to use. As an additional plus, Versus Market comes with the best phishing protection available so you will never have to worry about accidentally landing on the wrong site. If markets with a wide variety of products are what you are usually browsing it (such as Darkbay), Versus Market is definitely a site you should check out.