Mars Market Link: Tor, I2P, and Multisig

How to Identify the Real Mars Link

A .top or .xyz site wearing the Mars name is someone else's page. The market address is the onion above. A normal website is easy to put online, and a 56-character onion is not, so ordinary search fills with the short domains. People looking for a link meet the copy first.

Mars also keeps onion mirrors. Those are other onions, not .com or .top addresses, and the mirror list is signed with the administration's PGP key. A domain that is not on that list is not a mirror, logo or no logo. A forum post with a fresh onion has the same problem until it shows up on the signed list. The full market list compares Mars to the other names on coins and escrow; this page is the deliverable for the Mars address.

Mars runs on Tor and on I2P

Mars is reachable on Tor and on I2P. The onion above is the Tor address. I2P is the second network, there when the onion is blocked or under attack. The two networks fail separately: a flood against the onion does not, by itself, take I2P down, and the account is the same one on both. No I2P address was published with this onion, so none is printed here. An I2P string from a forum is the same kind of trap as a .top page.

The storefront is a normal shop layout: search, a category menu, vendor cards. It is built to fit Tor Browser on a phone as well as a desktop window, which most markets still treat as an afterthought. The interface is English and Russian. The crowd it is aimed at is Europe and the CIS. Mars also includes short guides inside the market for PGP, for a Monero wallet, and for Tor and I2P, so a new account is not sent out to a random tutorial site for those three.

Bitcoin in, Monero to the vendor

Mars takes Bitcoin and Monero. Bitcoin does not stay Bitcoin. For a Bitcoin payment the market generates a BTC address through an outside exchange, the exchange turns those coins into Monero, and the vendor is paid in XMR. Someone who already holds Monero pays that coin and skips the exchange. DrugHub stays on Monero only and does not run a Bitcoin conversion at all. The Monero guide is why the vendor side is the harder coin to follow.

The rate can move while the conversion runs, and the exchange is a third party that can go down. Both are the cost of paying in Bitcoin. The market's own cut is separate: about 5% of a sale.

Two signatures out of three

Release needs two signatures out of three: the buyer, the vendor, and the market. Any pair can move the money. Buyer and vendor can settle with each other. Buyer and market, or vendor and market, can settle when the third will not sign. One signature is not enough. The balance still sits in a market wallet until that second signature lands.

Mars kept the deposit wallet instead of switching to a walletless design, and put the second signature on the release. Two signatures slow a fight with a vendor. They do not stop the operators from leaving with the wallet. From mid-2024 to the address dated 30 September 2026 is about two years, a short run for a market that still holds deposits. Market escrow is where that kind of hold fails. Login and messages on Mars use a PGP key the account holder brings, and the market does not keep that private key. TOTP sits on the account as a second factor. The key and the code protect the login. They do not watch the wallet.

Common questions about Mars