Among the handful of black markets that have survived law enforcement’s recent crackdown on the Dark Web, the drug selling site RAMP is different: First, it’s written in the Russian language, and caters to only Russian clientele. Second, it’s the longest-surviving crypto market out there; It’s outlived both the Silk Road and Silk Road 2. And third, there’s the unusual figure behind it: A chatty, no-nonsense drug lord who goes by the name of Darkside.

Darkside has run RAMP, or the Russian Anonymous Marketplace, since September of 2012, laying down strict rules for the site’s 14,000 active buyers and sellers, along with a handful of moderators who seem to work under his or her employment. RAMP’s kingpin has closely guarded his real identity, including even gender, though his RAMP forum avatar of Edward Norton’s character from Fight Club suggests he's male. He lists his location only as “a galaxy far, far away.”

But Darkside nonetheless agreed to an interview with WIRED, conducted over RAMP’s private messaging system and protected by the anonymity software Tor. And in nearly perfect English (with some grammar mistakes corrected below) the Russian don of the Dark Web shared details of RAMP’s business ranging from its total revenue, to its plans for expansion, to how he believes it’s managed to stay online so much longer than the Western competition.

On his wealth: “I can perhaps be considered a rich guy”

Darkside says that RAMP makes around $250,000 a year from its brisk drug trafficking business. That’s far less than the Silk Road or the Silk Road 2, in part because RAMP doesn’t take a commission on sales—in its decentralized system, dealers and buyers find one another on RAMP’s site and then make deals off-site using the encrypted chat system known as OTR. Instead of those commissions, Darkside charges dealers $300 monthly fee for a prime spot on its home page and an extra $1,000a month for a “license” to sell cocaine, hash and amphetamines in the lucrative Moscow market.

But Darkside says that six-figure number represents a tidy fortune in its local economy, presumably after his bitcoins have been traded for Rubles. “I can be perhaps considered a rich guy for a local, though you can't live well on your legal salary here,” he writes, declining to comment on what that “legal” day job might be. “We ain't dollar millionaires, just upper middle-class guys who do their job and feed their families.”

On RAMP’s origins: “The classic Russian model of darknet business”

Darkside says that he was inspired by the Silk Road’s rising success in early 2012 to create RAMP—he calls the Silk Road's model of anonymous, bitcoin-based e-commerce “a masterpiece.” But he also based RAMP on what he describes as “the classic Russian model of dark net business,” the less automated, forum-based market system long used by Russian cybercriminals to transact in stolen credit cards and other black market information.

On RAMP’s next phase

Despite that decentralized model’s success for RAMP, Darkside says he’s planning to maximize his profits with a new Russian-language drug market that would automate bitcoin-based e-commerce for drugs just as the Silk Road did, or existing English-language markets like Evolution and Agora do today. He’s also planning a Russian bitcoin- and litecoin-based gambling site.

On politics vs. business: “Politics attract attention”

Unlike other vocal administrators of Dark Web drug sites like Silk Road’s Dread Pirate Roberts and Silk Road 2’s Defcon, Darkside avoids any libertarian or libertarian rhetoric around his market. In fact, his rules for the site ban political discussions on RAMP altogether.

“Politics always attract extra attention,” Darkside writes. “We do not want that.”

Also banned on RAMP are the sales of guns, stolen goods, and even pornography, which in some cases is illegal in Russia. But unsurprisingly, he has a more liberal attitude about drugs. “Any person should have the right to choose what to take or not to,” he says. Darkside says his own personal favorites are hashish, opioids, and the psychedelics known as tryptamines. “They’re quite enjoyable :),” he writes.

On how RAMP has survived: “We never mess with the CIA”

Over its two and a half years online, RAMP has survived waves of law enforcement crackdowns on the Dark Web, including Operation Onymous, the joint FBI and Europol operation that seized dozens of Dark Web sites including three out of six of the top anonymous drug markets. But Darkside attributes that longevity simply to RAMP’s focus on Russian customers, whose government notoriously turns a blind eye to online crime, rather than Americans, whose three-letter agencies’ scrutiny he hopes to avoid. “We never mess with the CIA, we work only for Russians and this keeps us safe,” he says. “You can't rape the whole world and remain safe.”

Given the sheer number of Tor-protected sites taken down in Operation Onymous, some Dark Web administrators and security experts have speculated that American or European law enforcement exploited a flaw in Tor itself. The only reason any Tor-protected drug sites have remained online, researchers like Berkeley computer scientist Nicholas Weaver argue, is because they may be hosted in countries like Russia that don’t cooperate with Western cops.

Darkside says he doubts that Tor’s protection has been cracked, though he doesn’t have any inside knowledge of the software’s security. And as to the location RAMP’s servers? He responds with a smiling emoticon. “On the darkside of the moon, obviously.”