NexusVendorPortal
Mirrors operational
NexusVendorPortal
Mirrors operational
The market has been operating as a Tor hidden service since the autumn of 2023. It launched after the long collapse of two senior markets in 2022 left the community without a stable platform that ran multisig escrow and Monero by default. Nexus filled that gap and has held the position since.
Nexus Market was assembled by a small group of operators who had run vendor accounts across Empire, Dream, and several short-lived successors. The thesis was simple. The biggest losses to the community in the previous decade had come not from law enforcement raids but from exit scams by single-key escrow operators. The fix was already known, multisig, but most platforms refused to ship it because it complicates dispute resolution. Nexus shipped it anyway.
The architecture was finalised through the spring of 2023. Beta access opened to a closed group of vendors with established reputations from prior platforms. By October the market had cleared its first hundred orders end to end, and the public onion was published with a signed PGP key. That same fingerprint, ending in 0A9D, has signed every public announcement since.
The frontend is a static React bundle served from a hidden service. Every interactive component talks to the backend through an encrypted JSON envelope, where order details, vendor messages, and shipping addresses are sealed in the browser before transmission. The backend stores ciphertext keyed to the user session and the recipient public key. A leak of the database yields encrypted blobs and nothing more.
Escrow is a 2-of-3 multisig contract on Monero, with a Bitcoin layer for legacy balances. Buyer, vendor, and platform each hold one signing key. To release funds, two parties must sign. This is what kills exit scam risk. Even if the platform vanishes overnight, buyers and vendors can co-sign a release without it.
Mirrors are operated as completely separate hosts, not load balancers in front of one box. Each onion runs its own Tor instance, its own descriptor publishing, and its own rate limit. Mirror outages are isolated by design. The roster is signed every 24 hours and republished on this gateway.
Monero is the default settlement currency. New buyer accounts onboard directly to XMR. Bitcoin is supported only for legacy balances that predate the 2024 currency rotation, and even those balances are encouraged to swap on signup. The reasoning is mechanical. Bitcoin transactions are visible on a public ledger that chain-analysis vendors index in real time. Monero transactions are not. For a market whose entire purpose is privacy, only one of those defaults makes sense.
The platform never holds large pooled balances in either currency. Each multisig contract is funded per order. After release, funds settle to the vendor wallet without passing through a central treasury. There is no hot wallet to drain, no cold wallet to seize.
Vendors apply through the in-market portal after creating a buyer account in good standing. The application asks for a PGP key, a vendor handle, a description of categories, and an upfront bond denominated in XMR. The bond is held in multisig with the platform and refunded after a probation window or forfeit on the first confirmed scam complaint. The amount tracks category risk, higher for goods that draw more disputes.
Vendor profiles are signed at submission. Buyer feedback is signed at the moment of leaving. Neither can be edited later by anyone. A vendor cannot cleanly walk away from a bad rating, the only path is to complete more orders and let the average move.
Disputes are filed inside the order ticket and are visible only to buyer, vendor, and the dispute panel. The panel rotates among long tenured staff and never has the same composition twice in a row. Rulings are written, signed, attached to the vendor profile, and visible to the buyer immediately. There is no private deal making with the platform. There is no reversal.
The vast majority of disputes resolve in vendor favour because the vast majority of buyers file frivolous claims. The minority that resolve in buyer favour come from documented vendor failures, mis-shipped goods, missed deadlines, or refusal to communicate through the in-market message system.
The market does not list any category that involves persons. Not vendors, not buyers, not the platform, no one trades persons. This is a hard line, not a marketing position, and accounts that probe it are removed without recovery. The same applies to weapons of mass effect. A vendor caught listing either category loses the bond, the account, the history, and any pending escrow contracts default to buyer.
The market also does not run an affiliate program, a referral payout, or a clearnet advertising budget. If you found Nexus Market through an ad, the destination is not Nexus Market. The signed PGP fingerprint 0A9D is the canonical authenticity check. Anything that fails it is not us.