From 2019 to early 2021, DarkMarket stood as the largest and most active darknet marketplace. Operating as a general-purpose bazaar, it primarily dealt in narcotics, counterfeit money, and stolen data. With approximately 500,000 users and 2,400 vendors, DarkMarket facilitated over 320,000 transactions, exchanging at least €140 million ($170 million) in cryptocurrency.

The downfall of DarkMarket was linked to the massive 2019 raid on the CyberBunker in Traben-Trarbach, Germany. The former NATO bunker had been used to host "untouchable" services. When German police seized its physical servers, they gained access to information leading them to DarkMarket's backend servers in Moldova and Ukraine.

In January 2021, an international coalition consisting of Europol, the FBI, and police forces from Germany, Denmark, and the UK executed a coordinated strike against DarkMarket. A 34-year-old Australian national was identified as its suspected mastermind and was arrested near the German-Danish border. Law enforcement seized over 20 servers that kept the market online, effectively shutting it down overnight.

Following this takedown, law enforcement agencies launched Operation Dark HunTor in late 2021. Seizing the extensive database of vendor and buyer information obtained from the DarkMarket servers, they targeted individuals who had traded on the site, resulting in over 150 arrests across the US, UK, Germany, and other countries. Authorities confiscated over $31 million in cash and cryptocurrency, along with hundreds of kilograms of drugs and 45 firearms.

The successful takedown of DarkMarket serves as a prime example of how "untouchable" VPS services are never out of law enforcements' reach and if you ever launch a darknet service using a VPS that is linked to your location, personal information, or the services' backend server, you will likely be found eventually.