Darknet Market Glossary
Plain definitions of the terms used across Anubis Market and the wider darknet. Each definition is the one that matters for the decision you are making, not the dictionary one. If a term on this site is not defined here, it is defined on the page that uses it.
The terms
12 terms| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Escrow | A payment-holding system. The buyer's coins are held by the market and released to the vendor only after the buyer confirms delivery. It reduces vendor fraud on a single order, but it does not protect against an exit scam, in which the market itself disappears with all escrowed funds. |
| Multisig | A wallet that requires more than one key to sign for the funds to move. Anubis uses 2-of-3 multisig: the buyer, the vendor, and the market each hold one key, and two of the three must sign. A dispute is resolved by the market signing with its key. |
| Auto-finalize | A timer that releases escrow to the vendor automatically after a set period, whether or not the buyer has finalized it. Anubis uses a 14-day window that starts at order confirmation, not at delivery. A dispute that misses the window is unrecoverable. |
| PGP | A public-key encryption system. On Anubis, shipping details are encrypted to the vendor's public key at checkout, and the login can use a PGP challenge as a second factor. Client-side encryption means your plaintext never leaves your device. Server-side PGP means the plaintext exists on the market's infrastructure for a window before encryption. |
| Onion | A Tor hidden-service address, ending in .onion. A v3 onion is 56 characters long. A clone is a one-character-off onion that copies the storefront. The address in your browser bar is the one you opened, and it is the one a clone cannot change. |
| Mirror | One of several onion addresses that resolve to the same market. Anubis runs three at once, all resolving to the same market with the same account and balance. Switching mirrors changes the route your traffic takes, not your balance or your open orders. |
| Circuit | The path your traffic takes through Tor, roughly six relays. A slow circuit is not a slow address. The address is the destination, and the circuit is the road. A new circuit is the fix for a slow connection, not a new address. |
| Bond | An upfront fee a marketplace charges sellers before they can list products, intended to deter scammers by making fraudulent selling expensive. Anubis charges a one-time vendor bond, waivable for vendors with established standing on other named markets. |
| Finalize | The act of confirming receipt and releasing the escrow to the vendor. You finalize with your key, the vendor finalizes with theirs, and the funds release. If you do not finalize, the auto-finalize timer does, and the risk moves to you. |
| Recovery phrase | The phrase that restores an account you have locked out of. It is not stored on the market, and it is not something the market can replace. A lost recovery phrase is not a locked account. It is a closed one. |
| Tile captcha | The six-tile login challenge on Anubis, with decoy input fields whose names rotate on every page load. It is there to frustrate automated phishing kits. Solve the tiles in the visible field only, and do not fill the decoy fields. |
| Clone | A one-character-off onion that copies the storefront and harvests credentials. It surfaces at the moment you search for the address, which is why the search is the risk. The address check before you type a password is the one that stops it. |
The terms that decide the order
Three of these terms are the ones that decide where the risk sits when an order goes wrong: escrow, auto-finalize, and finalize. Escrow is the holding. Auto-finalize is the timer that releases it on its own. Finalize is the act that releases it on purpose. The 14-day window is the part that surprises people, and the detail is on the escrow page.
The terms that decide the account
Three of these terms are the ones that decide whether an account comes back: recovery phrase, PGP, and clone. The recovery phrase is the one thing that restores the account. PGP two-factor is the one credential that limits the damage of a phished password. A clone is the one thing that takes the password, and the address check is the one that stops it. The detail is on the account recovery page and the phishing page.