Evolution, the world's largest and most popular darknet marketplace, is now completely unreachable. Since the FBI shutdown Silk Road and Silk Road 2, Evolution had risen to the top of the table as the darknet's most successful drugs market. But over the weekend, signs started to appear that something wasn't right – and this time it doesn't look like it was the feds.

Evolution was a darknet site renowned for never being offline, an unusual trait for such marketplaces – Silk Road often suffered from periods of downtime. It was this consistent online activity that actually led to speculation that Evolution was a "honeypot", a term given to darknet markets set up by federal agents looking to trap dealers. Silk Road 2.0, run by Blake Benthall, was said to be an FBI-run trap.

This weekend, Evolution prevented users from withdrawing Bitcoin (BTC) from the site, citing technical difficulties as the reason. Then, late last evening, the Evolution marketplace and its popular user forum went offline, without any opportunity for members to withdraw BTC from their wallets.

It appears that there hasn't been any federal involvement with the shutdown - last time each darknet marketplace was closed down, a message appeared telling anyone viewing it that it had been seized by the FBI. This time, no such message, prompting fears that the site's admins have escaped with millions of pounds of members' money and retired to a life of luxury, immorally obtained.

This post, written by someone claiming to be an Evolution staff member, appeared 12 hours ago on a darknet subreddit: