A Complete Guide to Kingdom Market

In this guide we explain everything you need to know to get connected to Kingdom Market, one of the hottest darknet markets currently in operation.

Kingdom Market is a newer darknet market that is relatively small, with a bit less than 4,000 listings at any given time. It is free from a lot of the clutter that tends to make other markets unpleasant to navigate, and supports four different payment options (BTC, XMR, LTC, and ZEC). It is limited in ordering methods to traditional escrow and finalize early (FE), though they do offer a unique “Pony & Orient Express” payment method that is kind of like FE on steroids. The market recently celebrated its first birthday and is currently more popular than ever, largely thanks to the fact that many of its competitors have ceased to operate within the single year of its lifetime.

Kingdom employs one of the weirder captcha systems we’ve ever seen. It may appear frustrating and even nonsensical first, but after a while a pattern of what to do emerges, and then it becomes a rather simple task. The market also requires that you paste the URL of the mirror you are visiting and enter a second captcha upon each login, which may seem cumbersome to new visitors, and perhaps even enough to dissuade them from dealing with the market altogether.

Some of the other potentially not-so-cool things about Kingdom include the fact that the market forces reliance on the traditional account deposit system, a 1% deposit fee (almost unheard of), doesn’t make it easy to see how many times an item has been previously purchased, and doesn’t make it easy to tell if a vendor is FE-enabled before making a purchase. Most of the vendors on Kingdom seem to have relatively few sales on the market itself, although some have extensive sales and feedback histories imported from other markets. For example, we found one vendor who had apparently completed over 16,000 sales on other markets, yet only had 8 over the last 12 months on Kingdom Market.

The diminishing expected lifespan and increasing rate of closure among darknet markets works both for and against Kingdom Market. On one hand, buyers and vendors migrating from recently-exited markets make for more traffic on Kingdom, which means more selection and more feedback to help sort the good vendors from the bad. On the other hand, Kingdom’s reliance on traditional escrow makes it a high-value target for scammers, phishers, and increases the lucrativeness of an exit scam. You can avoid huge losses as a customer by only depositing enough funds to cover one order at a time on the market and keeping individual orders manageable in size.

Basic Facts about Kingdom Market

• Year founded: 2021
• Kingdom Market link – 6lcbxx6flopgqqd6bhcug4dwldm4tmm4kg4ig3vfib4yiejjbxbmucad.onion
  qmvjivdacwyrirouxwtnx6hpl77z5beho7wngd2j2tr6nt4mrjegsuad.onion

• Cryptocurrencies accepted: Bitcoin (BTC), Monero (XMR)
• Total Product/Service listings: 3,700+
• Listing Categories: Drugs, Services, Securities & Hosting, Miscellaneous, Jewelry, Identification, Guides and Tutorials, Fraud, Counterfeit, Software & Malware, Carded Items
• Multi-signature escrow? No
• Finalize Early? Yes (for vendors with >1500 total orders)
• Cost of vendor bond: 250 EUR

Before Getting Started

There are a few important concepts of which you must have an (at least) intermediate level of understanding if you want to use Kingdom Market or any other darknet market. They include the following:

• Tor. You will need to have previously installed the Tor browser on your computer to access .onion sites like Kingdom Market. Although Tor browsing is private and untraceable via your IP, your internet service provider (ISP) can still log that you connected to Tor, even though they won’t know what sites you visited. For complete anonymity, consider purchasing a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service to mask your connection to the Tor network.
• Cryptocurrency. You will also need a basic understanding of cryptocurrency; namely how to send and receive it — as well as how to obtain it. Remember that the Bitcoin blockchain records all movement of your BTC, so it is considered an unwise practice to send your coins from an exchange that has your personal identification information (for KYC or AML purposes) directly to a darknet market. Consider using Monero (XMR) instead as this option is supported by many vendors on Kingdom Market.
• PGP. You must know the basics of PGP encryption, including how to generate a public/private key pair, how to import PGP keys, how to encrypt messages, and how to decrypt messages sent to you that are encrypted with your own PGP key. Although Kingdom Market does feature an auto-encrypt system, we strongly recommend encrypting your own shipping information as this is considered to be standard OpSec procedures and a must for darknet market purchases in 2022.

Disclaimer: This guide is for research purposes only and should not be construed to be advice; legal or otherwise. The authors of this guide do not condone activities that are illegal in your jurisdiction or others. Use the contents of this guide and/or Kingdom Market at your own risk.

Creating an Account

To create an account on Kingdom Market, first press the green “Sign Up” button toward the bottom left of the login screen. Fill in all the fields provided and be sure to use a unique username (and password) that cannot be tied to your real-life or other online identities.

Press “Signup” when you have entered your desired credentials, selected a price display currency, and entered the captcha. You will then be transported to a screen that displays what appears to be a random sentence. This is known as your mnemonic.

The mnemonic is a series of 10 words that can be used to recover your account should you somehow manage to get locked out of it. Unlike most other darknet market mnemonics, this one comes in a sentence format, which should theoretically make it easier to memorize (if you have a great memory to begin with). Be sure to save this mnemonic someplace safe and secure, along with your login name and password. After you have done so, press “Continue”. Your account will now have been created. You will then be logged into Kingdom Market and can begin browsing.

Setting a PGP Key

You will need to attach a PGP public key to your account before attempting to place any orders on Kingdom Market. To do this, first click the Profile icon toward the top right of the screen, which looks like the outline of a head and shoulders.

Next, scroll down the Profile screen until you see the Account Information section. The third and largest text box, titled “PGP”, is where you will enter your PGP public key. This will be used to receive encrypted communications and is a must when using any darknet market. Paste your entire PGP public key into the box. It will look something like this when entered correctly:

Note that Kingdom Market suggests enabling the 2FA option (which can be done by checking the corresponding box below the PGP key box). This will require you to decrypt a message every time you want to log into the market and is highly recommended for those who strongly value their online security. Check the “Two Factor Authentication” box, scroll down to the Confirmation box, enter the captcha, and press “Save”.

You will now be asked to decrypt a message that has been encrypted with your public key. This will prove your ownership of the PGP. We recommend clicking on the “Show Raw” option under the box as this opens the encrypted message in raw text format in a new window, thus making it much easier to copy and paste into your PGP utility. Next, decrypt the message using your PGP utility and paste the contents of the “code” field (between the quotation marks) into the Decoded Message text box. It should look something like this when properly pasted:

Press “Submit” to proceed. If everything goes according to plan, you will be returned to the top of the Profile screen and greeted with a message banner that reads “2 factor authentication activated successfully!”. You are now ready to start placing orders on Kingdom Market (after depositing enough coin to cover them, which we explain how to do in the section below).

Making a Deposit

Because Kingdom Market does rely on the traditional account wallet system, you will need to top up your account balance before placing an order. We recommend only depositing (roughly) enough coins to cover one order at a time as this will minimize the potential risk you face if the market were to suddenly disappear, for whatever reason. Somewhat interestingly, Kingdom supports four different deposit options: Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Monero (XMR), and Zcash (ZEC). Not every vendor will accept all these coins for payment, however, so make sure to check what coins the vendor from which you are purchasing an item accepts before making a deposit.

For the purposes of this guide, we will be selecting XMR as our deposit option. To do this, hover over the Balances menu option and select “Monero.”

You will then be brought to the deposit screen for XMR. Here you can read important instructions and details about how deposits are handled.

The XMR deposit address is the long string of letters and numbers that starts with an “8”. It is also represented via QR code as displayed on the right side of the above screenshot. This address will change after each deposit, so be sure to only use each address one time.

Note that it will take 10 confirmations before your deposit will be reflected in your account balance (normally about 20-25 minutes for XMR). Also note that Kingdom Market charges a 1% deposit fee per deposit, meaning you will need to add an extra 1% to your planned payment amount to have enough funds to cover your purchase. After your deposit has been credited by the system, your Monero balance will be updated to reflect it, and you will now be ready to place an order.

Browsing Kingdom Market

The layout of Kingdom Market is relatively clean and easy on the eyes. It is devoid of a lot of clutter that can ruin a darknet market browsing experience, as are the listings categories it hosts. These include the following:

• Drugs
• Services
• Security & Hosting
• Miscellaneous
• Jewelry
• Identification
• Guides & Tutorials
• Fraud
• Counterfeit
• Software & Malware
• Carded Items

Unlike most other markets of its kind, Kingdom’s categories are not divided into clickable subcategories, which can make browsing the more populated categories a bit difficult. What it does have is a decent selection of filters, one of which contains subcategories for each category. Selecting one of these (such as Cannabis, for example) and then clicking the search icon (magnifying glass) will bring up all the listings under this subcategory. Other filters include product type, price range, ships from/to, supported coins, and “verification” (standard escrow vs. finalize early). Here is an example of a subcategory listing page:

Here we can see three individual Cannabis listings. The vendor of the first item accepts all four coins supported, the second supports BTC and XMR, and the third supports BTC and LTC. The price of the item is conveniently denominated in each coin so you will know how much you need to deposit (after the 1% deposit fee has been collected) to make a purchase. Clicking on a listing brings up more information about it:

Here we can see pertinent facts about the item, such as its country of origin, payment methods accepted, quantity available, number of page views for the listing, when it was created, where the vendor will ship the item to, its pricing information, and shipping methods. Scrolling down a bit we see the following tabs, opened to Product Description by default:

It’s always a good idea to give each of these tabs a thorough read, especially when placing an order with a vendor for the first time. Try to stick to vendors who have some kind of sales and feedback history, although this may be an impossibility sometimes given that buyers are not required to leave feedback at Kingdom Market. Read the Refund Policy so that way you can know what to expect in case things don’t go as planned during the shipment process. We also recommend clicking on the vendor name toward the top of the listing information. This will bring you to their main page where you can learn their vending history on Kingdom and other darknet markets.

This particular vendor was active on 12 different markets previous or in addition to Kingdom Market and has a 100% positive feedback rate on Kingdom. They registered on Dec 19, 2021, lost zero disputes, and were last online yesterday. Scrolling down a bit more we can see a breakdown of their sales and feedback history on the market:

This vendor has had a total of 21 sales on Kingdom Market; 8 of which feedback were left for. Of these 8, all were positive, and 5 of them were left in the last month. The vendor has an average rating of four stars across three categories, which suggests they are fairly competent (even if sales are a bit slow). As mentioned earlier, we recommend sticking with vendors that have some kind of identifiable sales record on the market, and this vendor fits that description. Furthermore, we recommend steering clear of vendors without a sales history on Kingdom. Let others take the risk of going first and reporting their findings in the form of feedback.

Placing an Order

When you are ready to place an order, select the quantity desired and shipping option from the item page and then press “Buy Now”. Be sure that you have deposited enough coin of whatever type of crypto you will be paying with first as you will not be able to proceed with order placement without the required amount in your account balance. You will then be brought to the order confirmation page where you will review the pricing information one last time and enter your encrypted shipping information.

Manual encryption of shipping information is a must in today’s darknet market environment. To find the vendor’s PGP key, right-click their name toward the top of the order screen to bring up their profile, then scroll down past the rating summary and click on the PGP key. Copy the entire contents of this field and add it to your PGP utility (such as Kleopatra) using the Certificate Import feature. Next, copy the shipping address to which you want the item delivered and encrypt it using their PGP key (the one you just imported). Next, return to the order confirmation screen and paste the encrypted contents into the Notes field. It should look something like this when properly entered:

Note that the “PGP Encrypt message” box is not checked as this feature should be avoided at all costs. Next, enter your PIN, select the currency you will be paying with (we recommend Monero), enter the captcha, and press “Confirm Purchase”. Granted you have enough funds in your balance to complete the purchase, the funds will be deducted from your balance and the order will be placed. Because the prices of cryptocurrency tend to be volatile and considering the 1% withdrawal fee, be sure to add a buffer of at least 2% when making a deposit to ensure your order will be processed by Kingdom Market.

The vendor will begin preparing your order for shipment. If you have placed a FE order, you will need to mark your order as finalized after the vendor has marked it as shipped. This can be done from the Orders tab of the menu bar. For regular Escrow orders, wait until after you have received the item and found it to be to your satisfaction before releasing funds to the vendor. If the item is not what you expected, or never arrives at all, you can open a Dispute (also from the Orders tab). This will halt payment to the vendor until the dispute resolution team has had time to investigate the issue and decide as to whether or not you are due a refund.

Note that Kingdom hosts a unique type of ordering and payment system known as “Pony & Orient Express”. This is a kind of “super-FE” ordering method that allows buyers to place orders with the click of a few buttons. Instead of going through the usual process, all you need to do is select the desired options, encrypt your shipping information and press “Confirm Purchase”. The funds will be automatically released to the vendor after they have accepted the order, bypassing the need for any sort of finalization period or process. This option is reserved for the most trusted vendors, and it is not suggested you make use of it unless you have absolute confidence in the vendor’s ability and trustworthiness.

Kingdom Market url –

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qmvjivdacwyrirouxwtnx6hpl77z5beho7wngd2j2tr6nt4mrjegsuad.onion

Conclusion

To sum it up, Kingdom Market is a mixed bag when it comes to darknet markets in 2022. We don’t really know what to think of it other than many market users are being forced here due to the lack of many other options at the moment. Although Kingdom is already over a year old, the relative scarcity of completed sales by many of the most established vendors on the market is a bit worrisome, as it means vendors (and buyers) would seemingly rather use just about any other market possible. The fact that all users must rely on the classical account deposit and escrow system (except for a handful of FE-enabled vendors) is also worrisome, but the risk can be mitigated by limiting the size of your orders and never making deposits much bigger than required to cover one order at a time.