What is Tochka Market?
Tochka Market (originally known as “Point”) is a well established Russian anonymous marketplace that was established in 2015. It is specialized in drugs and medications of all kinds. Whether you need highly potent Cannabis buds or prescription drugs like Ritalin, Tochka market should be one of your go-to sites. If the market site is up, you can find the onion link for Tochka Market to the right of this article.
The people behind Tochka Market are advocates for free data and freedom for all. As a demonstration of this ideology, the source code for the website and app is open source and available to anyone. Additionally, Tochka offers access to a REST API for power users so processes can be automated.
One of the advantages of Tochka is that anyone can instantly become a vendor – there is no market collateral. To ensure a non-fraudulent market, Tochka has different vendor levels (reputation) that make it easy for anyone to identify reliable and trustworthy vendors on the site. The vendor level depends on the number of successful trades that will increase it while disputes and warnings decrease the level.
The market is secured by a 7-day escrow system with multi-signature payments. For additional security, Tochka has partnered with DNMAvengers, a community that is dedicated to reduce harm and spread awareness on the darknet by testing products suspected of containing adulterations.
Because of the escrow system, no direct communication is required between buyers and sellers on this site. Disputes are covered by its own policy which automatically overrides any contradicting vendor policy. For domestic orders, the dispute policy grants 7 days shipping, 14 days for Europe-to-Europe and 28 days for worldwide orders. In case of a dispute, the dedicated support staff will examine them individually.
For sellers there are different distribution options: Digital for all services and other digital items, mail for all products that can be sent by traditional mail, or a dead drop site can be negotiated for secure local stealth delivery.
For Android users, Tochka also offers an app for easier access to the site. As stated above, you are free to examine the source code before installation. It features automatic updates that are usually deployed every two to three weeks. To access .onion sites, the app uses Orbot for network traffic. All communication within the app is encrypted with OpenKeyChain. For obvious reasons, the app is not available on the Google Play Store so make sure to allow the installation of untrusted apps.
What you need
To browse the market or access the site in any other way, you need to register an account. Registration is a simple one-step process and does not require verification or an email address. To buy or sell items you will also need to set up a Bitcoin, or Etherum wallet in your payment settings. Other currencies are currently not supported. You will also need to add your public PGP key in your encryption settings. It is recommended to use a new and unique PGP key dedicated for this purpose. Once you have finished these initial setup steps, you can buy items on the market as well as listing items to sell.
Before engaging in extended buying and selling be aware of the limitations of darknet sites: This is not amazon, do not expect fast deliveries – be patient. If you believe you are getting scammed, always try to get in touch with the seller or buyer first before opening a dispute – often times there is a simple reason for a delay or it is possible that the buyer or seller was not reachable for a couple of days. Making sure to only use the dispute system when there are no other options left also guarantees that the support staff does not need to waste time with issues that could have been easily resolved by communication between the buyer and seller.
As a seller, it is recommended that you purchase a premium account as that will greatly enhance your reputation. You then also have the option to set up multi-signature wallets, making it possible to offer risk-free trades to any buyer, thus giving you an added advantage of trustworthiness over your competitors.
Experience Review
Our usual sample orders showed that Tochka is as reliable as any darknet market site can get. The vendor level ensures that you can buy from trustworthy vendors with almost zero risks of running into a fraud. But even our test orders from new vendors were successful in the majority of cases. The usual recommendation when buying from new vendors is that you should start by ordering small amounts so you’re not exposed to any loss you could not compensate.
While new vendors with low reputation should always be approached carefully (i.e. ordering small amounts at first) they sometimes do offer the best option when you are looking for the cheapest possible deal: Obviously, if an offer is outrageously cheap, alarm bells should go off but it is not uncommon for new vendors to undercut the bigger ones so they can build their reputation.
The site is easy to navigate since the market can be searched by using different categories. The general drugs section is divided into subsections for psychedelics, stimulants, emphatogens, opiates, dissociatives, cannabis and tobacco. Another section lists prescription drugs such as Ritalin, Xanax, Viagra or Adderall.
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 “Safest”). Cannazon 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.
Tochka Market Summary
Tochka Market is a good destination for anyone looking for small and medium amounts of various drugs pr prescription medicines. While the site offers some other categories such as digital services, it seems to be mostly populated by drug-related offers. For non-drug related markets we recommend other sites.
Currently Tochka Market has an uptime of slightly below 90% so it should be reachable most of the time. This is fairly stable for a darknet site. As far as security goes, Tochka market has about all features that are required to provide the necessary security for a darknet market: Registration is simple and does not need to be validated, all communication can be fully encrypted and the escrow system limits buyers as well as sellers from fraudulent trades. As always, when visiting any darknet market make sure to only use trusted links, such as the onion link for Tochka Market on the top right.