Ares Market Review

Ares Market has a very straight forward mission. They want to provide a platform that was really build by Vendors for Vendors. Most market administrators from the past and present simply are not Vendors or have never been vendors.
By combining our knowledge as Vendors they decided to set up a market that knows all the ins and out a vendor faces. But Ares staff is not only there for vendors, also for the customers because they fully understand their needs.
The main points that sets them apart from other markets in our opinion is:

Ares staff have years of darknet experience under their belt. The Ares members have over 25 year of experience combined between all involved parties.

Ares Market Onions

Open one of these Ares onions in your Tor Browser:

• sn2sfdqay6cxztroslaxa36covrhoowe6a5xug6wlm6ek7nmeiujgvad.onion
• bj6b5mers333ubzkiqla3majrifv5fzuznjmhbivwjdqt7q7ckyhykad.onion
• gtlohc26hgbbmdrj7lvu2qyspzdoiludz2yestoktbqqeifxr3eusqad.onion
• liwkxe47gb2hhypbazusz6i4xsayv4nnkqceum2b25iyqbpacfhjlrqd.onion
• a6bw363hqds6j3tclfgxnuvehpjo7fw3vrwkmvskcfslw523bwatz5id.onion
• 3k6wsobkhrtrs5ehxxjvu465xnr3xjxcxvwq22w3zdjra2kj4jxyg5id.onion
• jkr5y2gnmchmjugkibke2nrjco7tazf6i5ny5xxujonfpfrz4hmwjeid.onion
• vcmfsm7mubypuqr3tfjps5j5vn5zoqrjlzldmgvvkip76cepr3kakmad.onion
• a5kanymo53imclmmw4bgfkbm7pqksnnosqj5cud2sftpcgd26oko74yd.onion
• rj25tf2yep6ggxj5zc7cdb7nah3j6dhxxvvmfyipra43wmasjorafpyd.onion

Why Ares?

Compassion is one of their core values. Ares thinks it is very important that everyone will treat each other with the same respect as people used to have back in the days of SR1. Back then you would rarely see people insulting each other as you see now especially on one of the main forums, where the level of respect top each other has dropped terribly over the last 2 years.

Why should Vendors be excited to use Ares, you may ask?
Well they really try to make sure all Ares Vendors get sales. Ares does not believe in any friend politics, this is also another reason why they started Ares together. Also in their opinion the most important thing for Vendors is that you make them feel part of something great.

In addition, Ares will provide 24/7 assistance to all users this being Vendors or Customers; there is always a staff member watching that everything goes well and works fine. Since the launch they actually did not have a minute of downtime and they aim to keep it this way. Considering that Ares has only been online since the beginning of August and have amassed just over 2700 listings and well over 3k users tells me they are on the right track.

Further, they will continue to improve on multiple points regarding Ares.
Apart from the noticeable improvements to the design of Ares, they’ll reinforce the back end of the system as well as enforce more advanced security protocols.

Design

Ares is actually a very classic market in design and use. There are no magic things and this is something that they chose right from the beginning. The last thing you want is something that is totally different as a lot of vendors and even customers don’t have time to navigate through strange environments.
They preferred to offer something that would be easy to understand and work with for all users.
Ares offers XMR and BTC on checkout. This is in addition to encrypted inboxes, and kind of a cool design when it comes to the color palette.
They opted for nice and dark underground colors that really suits the dark theme.

Vendors

But as they mentioned before they have a lot of new things coming, or call it old things in a new style that will give all users a refreshing experience.
One of the darknet market weaknesses they did overcome with Ares is that they have a very strict policy when it comes to accepting new vendors – even some Vendors who paid to become an Ares Vendor got their Vendor status removed and fee refunded.
Ares feels that by being so selective they will provide all users with a better platform where scams are reduced to a bare minimum.
All Vendors are screened when they apply for a free vendor account on multiple platform such as Darknet Trust and Recon. But they also take the time to look at all other markets where they are active before taking a decision to see if they would be a good fit for Ares.
Here’s a surprising fact; they have had to handle ONLY 3 disputes since the launch of Ares Market – goes to show that they are doing a lot of things right!

Security

Ares has a good server set up that is well secured. They have deployed around the globe in good data centers that respect privacy a lot. When it comes to Ares itself for the users, they give all recommendations to the users when they sign up or sign in.
PGP is a must and so is 2 Factor Authentication. The checkout experience is very safe also for buyers. Quite obviously, they believe that the online users of today are smart enough to use both these tools when using a darknet marketplace.
They also want to shift slowly to a XMR only marketplace as they feel BTC days are numbered.
For now they still offer the option for Vendors to choose this as a payment option, but they do not encourage it.
Ares actually encourage Vendors that use only BTC to make the shift towards XMR. They are also working on an I2P version that should launch soon enough.
Another point they are very happy with is the speed of Ares.
Users will not often have to suffer long waiting times for a page to load.