It looks like they allow anybody to be a vendor. That makes me suspect that they may not be LE, although it certainly doesn't prove anything at all. If they didn't allow anybody to be a vendor then I would certainly suspect that they are LE. As long as they allow anybody to vend, it shouldn't matter too much if they are LE, because real security is and always has been in the hands of vendors and customers. Having a secure site helps too, but it certainly isn't a requirement, or even something that you should count on. So long as they allow anybody to be a vendor, we can conclude that it is not likely for all of the vendors operating there to be FBI. At this point, although not writing off the notion that they could indeed be LE, I am more inclined to worry that they may be scammers. I doubt that they have a much more secure system than SR, if at all, despite their claims, although it could be possible they have hardened the server a bit more (again, this shouldn't be a whole lot of concern to customers or vendors , provided they are actually making their own security and not foolishly relying on a server to give them security). I see they have some innovative features, the most interesting that I see being automatic encryption of orders and messages to vendors public keys. That wont do shit to protect from an attacker who is already in control of the server, and most certainly shouldn't be relied upon, but in the event that the server is legitimate currently, it will provide forward security of all messages (which means messages sent prior to a compromise will not be compromised, provided it is implemented correctly). SR claims to delete all messages / orders I believe, but I would be more confident in an automatic encryption system that never has plaintext leave memory honestly, in either case the end goal is the same but data recovery off a platter that hasn't been wiped with something like secure erase is much more plausible than breaking a ciphertext that hasn't had its plaintext ever stored on the disk. I believe SR also runs everything out of a mounted encrypted container, and while this is arguably better than nothing, from a technical perspective I have to say that in this particular area I think Atlantis has a more *potentially* secure system (having vendors upload public keys and encrypting all messages that are not already encrypted with that public key). I would actually like to request that SR adds this feature . That said the one certain thing that SR has that this site does not have is a history of not running away with all of the Bitcoins in the escrow, and that is something to keep in mind before considering using an alternative marketplace (and its escrow system). Also, it is feasibly an FBI sting still, it is widely known that very few people actually encrypt their addresses on SR (for fuck knows what reason), and if the FBI is in control of a server that has a lot of unencrypted addresses going through it, they could harvest them and lead a significant international bust. But since anybody can vend, we can be pretty confident that not all vendors are LE, and provided the vendors and customers use proper security themselves, it should be roughly no more or less safe than SR , from an LE perspective (provided they always let anybody vend, and of course that customers and vendors are being secure themselves, something that they may be banking on not being true. Also I suppose they could try to MITM GPG key transfers, but it should be just as possible to detect such behavior there as it is here, although if we already have faith in SR it seems like a bad idea to put faith in a competitor site, as the more faith you put in the more things the more likely you are to end up fucked...).