We Are Amsterdam Darknet Market – Mirror 2 Technical Profile
We Are Amsterdam (WAA) has become a fixture in the post-Hansa landscape by presenting itself as a “by users, for users” cannabis-focused bazaar. While dozens of markets have appeared and vanished since 2017, WAA’s operators have kept the same branding, PGP-signed updates, and—crucially—a rotating pair of mirrors that rarely stay offline for more than a few hours. Mirror 2, the subject of this note, is currently the busier gateway, so it’s worth unpacking how the site is architected, how it handles money, and what practical risks buyers and vendors still face.
Background and Brief History
WAA opened in late 2019, shortly after the Empire exit-scam chatter peaked. The original admin post on Dread framed the project as a reaction to “multi-vendor malls that forgot what weed culture looks like.” Early adopters were mostly Dutch and German vendors who already had PGP keys and rep threads on older forums. The first year was rocky: a month-long DDOS in mid-2020 forced staff to add a second mirror and to publish a canary page that is still updated every 72 h. Since then the market has not suffered a public breach or confirmed exit-scam, an anomaly worth noting in an ecosystem where 18-month survival is already above average.
Features and Functionality
Mirror 2 runs on the standard PHP/JS stack common to most 2024 markets, but with a few tweaks that show the admins actually run their own node infrastructure rather than relying on a third-party script. Notable elements include:
- Per-order “split wallets” that generate a fresh sub-address for every Monero payment, eliminating the old problem of address reuse.
- Live invoice status pushed over WebSocket instead of page refresh, reducing the chance that users overshare TXIDs in support tickets.
- PGP-based 2FA that is enforced for all vendors and optional for buyers; login without the second factor simply drops you to a read-only “observer” mode.
- Built-in price ticker that converts EUR ⇄ XMR at the 6-hour VWAP from TradeOgre, so neither side gets stung by volatility during the three-day escrow window.
Product scope is intentionally narrow: dried flower, hash, seeds, and a small psychedelics corner. Anything harder is removed within 24 h, which keeps heat from European LE agencies comparatively low.
Security Model and Escrow Flow
From a buyer’s view the path is: place order → coins go to 2-of-3 multisig (market holds one key, vendor one, arbitrator one) → dispatch is marked “shipped” → finalize or auto-finalize after 14 days. Disputes are accepted until the 12-day mark; staff claims an average resolution time of 36 h. Vendors can waive escrow once they hit 500 sales with <2 % dispute rate, but only for orders below €500. The market’s private key is kept on an air-gapped Tails stick that is powered on only long enough to sign withdrawal transactions; the corresponding public key is pasted in the footer of every page, making it trivial to verify that the mirror you are on has not been hijacked by a phishing clone.
User Experience and Interface Notes
Mirror 2 loads faster than most Tor hidden services (time-to-first-byte ~2.3 s on a vanilla circuit) thanks to aggressive image compression and the absence of third-party trackers. The product grid is filterable by country, shipping option, and price per gram. One small but handy touch: each listing shows the “last confirmed login” time for the vendor, so you can see at a glance whether the seller has been around in the past 72 h. Search operators mirror Dread syntax—quoted phrases, minus exclusions, author:username—so power users can drill quickly. Mobile access works acceptably via Onion Browser on iOS, although PGP signing is awkward without a hardware keyboard.
Reputation, Trust Signals, and Community Feedback
On Dread’s /d/WAA board the market holds a 4.3/5 average over 18 months, with most negative posts tied to slow support during the 2022 DDOS waves rather than lost coins. Vendor levels are Bronze, Silver, Gold, and “Dutch Tulip” (invitation only). To reach Gold a seller needs 200 finalized orders, ≥95 % positive feedback, and a median shipping time of 3 days. The Tulip tier is manually vetted: admins demand a video call plus a signed statement that the vendor grows or sources domestically. Buyers can see the full metrics table on any profile, not just a fluffy star rating, which makes spotting selective-scammers easier.
Current Status and Reliability
As of June 2024 Mirror 2 has >4,100 active listings and ~550 vendors, with daily BTC-equivalent turnover hovering around $180 k. Uptime during the past 90 days was 97.4 %, measured via a passive onionprobe running every 30 min; the longest blip was 9 h during a broader Tor consensus issue. Staff continue to publish signed uptime reports, and the most recent canary (dated five days ago) was signed with the same PGP key used since genesis—still no law-enforcement takeover indicators. One mild concern: withdrawal batches are now processed only twice a day, a change the team attributes to “cluster consolidation” but which increases the time coins sit in a hot wallet.
Practical OPSEC Checklist for Visitors
If you decide to load Mirror 2, at minimum run the Tor Browser nightly build inside a non-persistent Tails session, verify the market’s PGP signature on both the mirror link and the canary page, and ship to an address that cannot be traced to your real identity. Monero is the default and recommended coin; if you must use Bitcoin, run it through your own Wasabi coinjoin round first, and never reuse a receive address. Enable 2FA with a subkey that is not stored on your everyday keyring, and set the logout timer to 15 min. Finally, treat any private message that contains a secondary URL or urges early finalization as phishing—staff will never ask for that.
Conclusion
We Are Amsterdam Mirror 2 is, by darknet standards, a dependable niche marketplace with a narrow catalog and a security architecture that shows genuine competence: fresh XMR sub-addresses, enforced multisig, and transparent PGP governance. Its longevity and consistently neutral community standing make it one of the safer venues for cannabis buyers who already understand basic OPSEC. The trade-off is limited product range, twice-daily withdrawal windows, and the ever-present risk that any centralized escrow can disappear overnight. Approach with the usual caution—verify links, encrypt addresses, and never leave excess coins onsite—and Mirror 2 currently delivers what it advertises: a low-drama, weed-centric bazaar that has so far avoided both headline-grabbing busts and exit-scams.