Pax Romana is a fairly new Darknet Marketplace and exactly what we’ll be discussing in this Pax Romana review today.
Exit Scam
We’ve all seen quite a few Darknet Marketplaces come up in recent times. More of them going down, either in a seize or an exit-scam. And some others never gain enough traction to get off the ground to begin with.
We can’t say of the future, but as of now does Pax Romana offer what it takes to garner atleast some attention? Well, we’ll see.
As always, the primary questions we’re targeting include:
- How good (or bad) is the Pax Romana user-interface?
- What products are and aren’t available on Pax Romana?
- Who and how can someone sell on Pax Romana?
- What are the available security-features on the marketplace?
- What are the payment modes accepted on Pax Romana?
- How good is the search-functionality?
Let’s start this Pax Romana review with a bit of an outline of the same?
Pax Romana Overview
Pax Romana is a marketplace heavily influenced by the “Romanian” province (isn’t it obvious?). How it’s related to the region is beyond us. But well, as far as the marketplace goes here’s something which helps form an idea:
- Tor URL: paxromanarx4qxjb
- Security: Escrow + 2 of 3 Multisig + Withdrawal PIN + 2-FA.
- Vending: Allowed – $ 150.00 bond required.
- Cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Litecoin, Monero.
- Registration: Mandatory.
- Products: 1831+
- Dread: dreadditevelidot.onion/d/PaxRomana
How good (or bad) is the Pax Romana User Interface?
Traditional, classic, without a learning-curve. Just as the majority of us would prefer. Here’s what the dashboard looks like once you login-
As is pretty evident, it’s divided into three primary sections. The top-bar, the left-sidebar and the rest of the screen. Exactly alike most other Darknet Markets out there.
The top-bar is used to move around the different sections of the site. E.g. your account, wallets, notifications etc.
The left-sidebar obviously is used to display the product-categories. Accessing the sub-categories requires simply clicking once on the category you wish to expand.
The remaining screen displays the products.
The one additional aspect we loved about its interface is that, the product-listings are pretty informative. As in, users do not have to click on a product to get more details about it.
Basics such as the possible shipping destinations, ratings for the vendor, price, availability and non-availability of products are displayed right with the product-thumbnails.
It matters because it saves buyers time. They don’t have to go to every individual product-page to know if it does or doesn’t satisfy one or the other conditions that they generally need for their purchase. (e.g. Escrow/ country/ legitimate vendor etc.)
What products are and aren’t available on Pax Romana?
If you can’t find a product with your local retailer, either for legal/moral or ethical reasons, chances are it’s probably available on Pax Romana.
In simpler words, vendors are allowed to sell anything with two simple exceptions:
- Illegal porn.
- Content/products related to human-trafficking.
Now for the available products, a total of 1831+ individual products are listed as of today. Sure it’s not as good a number as you’d see with Empire Market or some other more-aged marketplaces out there. But in its defence, this number was observed at 1300 just 3 days ago. So I’d say the growth has been exponential.
The products have been broken down into 11 exact categories, the graph below will help you understand the exact number of products in each category:
Apart from the categories in the graph, Pax Romana also facilitates the trades of Art, Apparels, Tobacco etc. These currently do not have any products and hence have been omitted from the graph.
Who and how can someone sell on Pax Romana?
Pax Romana isn’t a single-admin marketplace. Rather, it’s just a facilitator or mediator of trades alike Dream Market or Empire Market.
Hence, it totally accepts third-party vendors. Any individual willing to sell on the marketplace can do so.
In order to sell on Pax Romana, users first need to create a normal/buyer account. Once done, there’s a link on the top-bar which says “Apply Vendorship”. This page lets users apply for a vending-account.
The vendor-accounts are “technically” free, however a vendor-bond sure exists. Interested parties need to deposit $150.00 worth of Cryptocurrencies on the marketplace for the account.
This bond is refundable, and is returned after 3-months of the deposit. This obviously is if the account still is in good standing without any disputes with the marketplace.
The vendor accounts can’t be used to purchase items once they’re switched to the “Vendor” status.
What are the available security-features on Pax Romana?
Quite a few actually, we’ll discuss each of these in brief:
- Auto session-timeout.
- Anti-Phishing measure.
- 2-FA.
- PGP Encryption.
- Withdrawal PIN
- Mnemonic code.
- Escrow & 2 of 3 Multisig transactions.
When a user first lands on the marketplace, the registration/login page displays a notification. It says “This session will expire in 6 hours”. We’ve personally experienced that the time-out doesn’t wait for 6 hours.
We can’t be sure of the exact time, but after a couple minutes of inactivity the account is auto-logged out. It’s not an “advanced” security measure rather a pretty basic one, and yet extremely rare to be found even on the most popular Darknet markets.
As for the “Anti-Phishing measure”, it obviously prevents users from depositing funds on a fake Pax Romana account.
Every single time that we log in, an image and notification like the following screenshot is displayed:
Although this too is confusing. The image changes for each login. In that case, it essentially is useless. It would only be useful if the same image was displayed on each login, the absence of which could indicate a fake site.
However in this case, a scam site too can easily put up a caricature of a Romanian character, and no one would be the wiser. Hopefully that’ll be fixed in the future updates.
The 2-FA is the standard 2-FA via PGP authentication. Withdrawal PIN is set by the users during registration. As the name suggests, it’s required in case they wish to withdraw their funds from the marketplace.
The Mnemonic code is more of an “after-the-fact” feature. This code is provided to each user after registration and is unique to them. Can be used to recover accounts after they’ve been hacked, or if they forget their password/PIN.
Obviously there’s an Escrow service which protects all trades between two parties (except Finalize-Early orders). Additionally, the marketplace supports 2 of 3 multisig transactions further strengthening anti-scam measures.
As for our final verdict on Pax Romana’s security features, we’re pretty impressed. There’s not a lot missing here.
What are the payment modes on Pax Romana?
Being a Darknet Market, obviously payment modes matter. Pax Romana currently accepts the following Cryptocurrencies:
- Bitcoin
- Litecoin
- Monero
All 3 Cryptocurrencies can be used to pay both for products, as well as for the vendor-bond.
What are the withdrawal policies on Pax Romana?
Unfortunately, Pax Romana isn’t a wallet-less marketplace. As a result, it’s common for funds to be leftover on the marketplace after making a purchase.
Fortunately the funds aren’t locked-in. These can be withdrawn at will. There doesn’t seem to be a minimum withdrawal amount as long as it exceeds the required fee.
This fee isn’t completely automated and can be controlled by the users to some extent. They get to choose from:
- Normal
- Fast
- Super speed.
The selected speed determines the fee for each withdrawal. However, there’s also an additional 0.9% static fee which is mandatory on top of the selected speed-fee.
How good is the search-functionality?
A good search-feature facilitates much faster product-searches. This section on this Pax Romana review is dedicated to a discussion of the same.
So here’s a glimpse of the search-functionality which Pax Romana brings with itself:
As is evident, the available filters include:
- Source country
- Destination country
- Escrow
- Categories
- Digital/Physical categorization (Product-class)
- and sort-by.
I know not why marketplaces refrain from a min-max price filter, but that certainly seems to be the case with Pax Romana as well.
Pax Romana Review- Wrap Up
So, this concludes it then, the final verdict on this Pax Romana review. Let’s be honest, have we seen better marketplaces? Definitely.
Can Pax Romana be improved? Without doubt. Is Pax Romana still a potential front-runner in the “Best Darknet Markets” competition? Si, yes, mucho, ciertamente.
When you weight the good against the “not so good” that the marketplace offers, it’s evident the former far outweighs the latter. The payment modes, Cryptocurrencies, security, products, everything is exactly what we expect from a marketplace at Pax Romana’s stage.
However hey, that’s just us. We’d love to grab your train of thought on the marketplace, I’m sure this Pax Romana review has been food for thought if nothing else.
Disclaimer: Trading on Darknet Markets is illegal (when illegal goods/services) are involved. We do not support/encourage/promote it. Doing so may land you in legal trouble. You’re solely responsible for all your activities on and off this page.