Inside the Mars Market storefront
The marketplace itself is a Tor-only storefront with a small set of categories, an account-based wallet and a multisig escrow on every order. The directory does not run any of that. The marketplace is operated by Mars Market and lives behind the addresses on the mirrors page. What follows is reader-oriented description, not affiliation.
Categories and listings
Listings on the storefront are arranged by category with a search and a per-vendor view. Each listing carries a price in the coin chosen by the vendor, a description, a shipping section and a small dispute history. The vendor name is a clickable badge that opens the vendor page, where finalisation behaviour, dispute record and outstanding orders are visible. The arrangement is conventional and is meant to be familiar to anyone who has used a Tor-based storefront before.
Escrow as a structure
Every order on Mars Market settles through a 2 of 3 multisig contract. Three keys exist, one for the buyer, one for the vendor, one for the platform, and any two of them are enough to release the funds. The platform does not sit between the buyer and the vendor as a custodian. It holds one of three keys and signs only when called on for a dispute. In an order that goes well, the platform key never moves. That structure is the part of the design worth pointing out because it closes the door on a particular kind of marketplace failure that has affected other storefronts.
Wallet and coins
The storefront wallet holds the buyer balance in any of three coins, Bitcoin, Litecoin or Monero, funded by a per-coin deposit address shown on the wallet panel. Monero is the privacy default and the coin the editor team recommends by default for new orders. Litecoin is convenient for small orders because confirmations arrive faster than Bitcoin. Bitcoin works for everything but leaves a public trace. Balances earn nothing while they sit, and the standing recommendation is to keep the wallet sized to the current order rather than to the next year of orders.
Messaging and trade
Vendors and buyers exchange messages through the storefront. The message store is encrypted by the storefront, and the wider recommendation is to layer a personal PGP key over the message system for anything that contains an address, a name or a tracking number. Each vendor page lists their published PGP key. Encrypting shipping detail locally before sending it means the storefront sees only ciphertext for the part that matters most, which is the part of the workflow most readers underestimate on a first order.