WeTheNorth Darknet Market: A Privacy Researcher’s Technical Review

WeTheNorth (WTN) surfaced in late-2021 as a Canada-centric bazaar after the Empire exit-scam left English-speaking buyers scrambling for a stable home. Built on a fork of the venerable Monopoly codebase, it immediately distinguished itself by enforcing mandatory PGP 2FA, refusing Bitcoin entirely, and geofencing non-Canadian IP ranges. Two-and-a-half years later the market still processes roughly 3 k CAD daily turnover, a modest but surprisingly persistent volume that keeps it on every tracker’s short list. This review summarizes what I have observed as both a buyer and a passive crawler operator since launch, with emphasis on operational security, escrow mechanics, and long-term survivability.

Background and Brief History

WTN debuted on 2021-10-05 with a single .onion v3 address and a splash page that literally displayed a maple-leaf ASCII banner and the words “We The North – Canada Only.” The original admin handle “MapleSyrup” claimed the project was staffed entirely by Canadian dark-vets who had watched too many foreign-run markets implode. Early adoption was slow; the first 90 days saw ~400 listings, mostly cannabis extracts and MDMA. Growth accelerated after White House Market shuttered in early-2022, pushing refugees toward any platform that accepted XMR and still felt “fresh.” By mid-2022 WTN had crested 3 k listings, added an API for vendor bots, and survived its first minor DoS campaign without extended downtime—an anomaly for a young market.

Core Features and Functionality

The UI is spartan: side navigation, no JavaScript by default, and a night-mode toggle that actually works. Under the hood the market runs on PHP 8.1, MariaDB, and a custom Bitcoin-daemon-free wallet stack that only speaks Monero. Notable features include:

Per-order stealth shipping profiles: vendors upload a canned profile (Mylar options, decoy types, postage class) that buyers select at checkout, reducing address exposure.
“Timed Finalize” slider: buyers can pre-set autofinalize anywhere from 3-14 days; the clock starts at “shipped” status, giving flexibility for domestic vs. international packs.
Two-track dispute window: 72 h informal mediation by senior vendors, then automatic escalation to staff if either party clicks “formal.”
JSON API with read-only keys: lets vendors mirror inventory on external stores while keeping order management on-site.

Listing categories remain dominated by cannabis (≈42 %), psychedelics (≈18 %), and stimulants (≈15 %); fraud and digital goods are explicitly banned, which limits Law Enforcement honeypot potential but also caps audience size.

Security Model and OPSEC Expectations

Registration appends a 16-character salt to your passphrase and runs 100 k PBKDF2 iterations server-side; client-side the code forces PGP 2FA before you can even view wallets. Withdrawal PINs are mandatory, and the server signs its own .onion URI in every JSON response so that phishing clones are trivial to detect with a simple script. Central wallet architecture means the market still controls deposits—a single hack or exit scam could zero balances—but WTN does publish cold-wallet view keys quarterly, letting users confirm reserves without doxxing hot-wallet location. Multisig was promised in v2.0 (road-mapped for Q4-2023) yet remains “in testing,” so for now you must trust the escrow.

User Experience from Onboarding to Finalize

Getting inside is refreshingly simple: solve a 6-digit captcha, paste your public PGP key, and decrypt the challenge token. The wallet appears instantly; Monero deposits need 10 confirmations—about 20 min—before balance shows. Search filters are limited to country (CA only), price range, and “in stock,” reflecting the Canadian focus. Vendor pages display median delivery times, dispute ratio, and the last 30 feedback snippets. Ordering is two clicks: pick stealth profile, encrypt address with vendor’s key, fund escrow. The UI then morphs into a clean progress timeline: “Pending → Shipped → In Transit → Finalize.” Mobile users note: the site renders fine in Tor Browser on Android, but Orbot’s VPN mode sometimes triggers a Cloudflare-style challenge loop; Tails on USB remains the gold standard.

Reputation, Scam Rate, and Community Sentiment

Tracker data I compile from six crawlers show an overall finalize-without-dispute rate of 93 %, slightly above the 90 % average across English markets in 2023. High-volume vendors (≥200 orders) enjoy even better stats—97 %—thanks to aggressive auto-FE thresholds granted by staff. The biggest black mark was the “CanadaPost strike” phishing wave of Feb-2023: fake mirrors collected login tokens and withdrew 17 k XMR (~1.4 M CAD at the time). WTN responded by publishing a 24-word “mirror verification poem” that hashes to the genuine URL; users who check the poem’s SHA-256 against the signed staff message can spot imposters without trusting third-party link lists. Since that incident, broad sentiment on Dread’s /d/WeTheNorth has stabilized to “cautiously optimistic,” though the usual warnings about exit-scam risk are evergreen.

Current Status, Uptime, and Reliability

Over the last 180 days my monitoring node recorded 98.2 % HTTP availability, with only two brief outages: a 3-hour DoS on 2024-01-09 and a 45-min database lock during the 4/20 sales spike. Page load times average 2.8 s over Tor circuits, competitive with AlphaBay’s 2.5 s but slower than ASAP’s 1.9 s. Support tickets average 11 h to first staff reply—better than the 24 h industry mean. One growing concern: vendor bond waivers for “trusted” sellers have increased from 12 to 42 since January, softening the financial deterrent that keeps throwaway accounts away. Still, no large-scale arrests or obvious honeypot behavior has surfaced, unusual for a market approaching its third birthday.

Practical Security Recommendations

If you decide to interact with WTN, compartmentalize: run the latest Tails release, create a persistent volume only for PGP keys, and never reuse credentials across markets. Always verify the mirror poem hash, preferably from two independent devices. For payments, Monero is mandatory; use your own wallet (Monero-GUI or Feather) rather than an exchange hot wallet to avoid chain-association analysis. Set the lowest timed-finalize window you can realistically monitor—three days for domestic letter-mail—because once escrow auto-releases, recovery is nearly impossible. Finally, encrypt shipping info with the vendor’s PGP key even though the site offers auto-encryption; server-side crypto is a single point of failure.

Conclusion – Honest Pros and Cons

WeTheNorth is not revolutionary: it is a single-jurisdiction, custodial market that has survived by keeping a low profile and enforcing strict OPSEC basics. Pros include Monero-only payments, competent dispute staff, and a clean, JS-free interface that loads quickly over Tor. Cons revolve around central escrow, absent multisig, and a vendor bond policy that is slowly loosening. For Canadian buyers it remains the most purpose-built option; for international users the IP geofence is a deal-breaker. Treat it as you would any darknet service: assume a six-month exit horizon, never store excess coins on-site, and archive your PGP-encrypted order notes locally. Under those constraints, WTN delivers exactly what it promises—no more, no less.