White House Market Mirror-4: A Technical Look at the Current Iteration

The fourth generation mirror of White House Market (WHM) has quietly resurfaced after the original’s voluntary shutdown in late 2021. For researchers who track Tor-based commerce, the re-appearance is noteworthy: the code base is almost identical, the Monero-only payment rule is intact, and the familiar PGP-forced 2FA login is back. Mirror-4 is not a rebranded successor like many “Market 2.0” resurrections; it is a straight clone hosted on new onion keys, apparently run by former staff who kept the original cold-wallet seeds and vendor database. That makes it one of the few mirrors that can credibly claim continuity of reputation scores and escrow history—an unusual event in the post-Alphabay ecosystem.

Background and Brief History

White House Market launched in August 2019 as a midsize drug-focused venue. Within a year it grew to several thousand vendors by enforcing three strict policies: Monero only, mandatory PGP for everything, and no on-market wallets (direct pay). The operators cited “security over convenience” and proved it in October 2021 when they shuttered cleanly—no exit scam, finalizing all outstanding escrow and publishing a signed goodbye. For two years the original onion pairs stayed offline until early 2024 when signed messages began circulating on Dread announcing “Mirror-4.” The keys verified against the old admin key-set, giving weight to claims that the same team controlled the new hidden service. Since then uptime has hovered around 96 %, respectable for a young onion, though still short of the original’s 99 % record.

Core Features and Functionality

The UI is a pixel-perfect copy of the 2021 build: sidebar navigation, per-listing multisig escrow timers, and a “stealth mode” that strips product images. A few tweaks are visible under the hood:

Monero primary, Bitcoin optional: deposits now hit a temporary BTC→XMR swap if a user insists, but vendors may still refuse BTC.
Per-order stealth phrases: buyers set a short phrase that the vendor must place inside the package; this reduces address-reuse leaks.
Vendor bond 0.15 XMR (≈$25), waived for vendors with 500+ sales on the old market who sign a message with their legacy PGP key.
Mirror health API: returns JSON uptime stats so third-party link aggregators can auto-replace dead mirrors without exposing referrers.

Search filters remain granular—ship-from country, FE tolerance, max escrow price—useful for buyers who refuse to finalize early.

Security Architecture

WHM Mirror-4 keeps the “no hot wallet” rule. Funds flow straight into a 2-of-3 multisig address until the buyer finalizes or the timer expires. The market’s key is held on an offline machine that signs only twice per day, meaning a server seizure cannot instantly steal escrow balances. 2FA is enforced at login: username + password + decrypted PGP challenge. Phishing clones are deterred because the real mirror publishes its onion key fingerprint in the footer; users can paste that into the Tor Browser address bar to confirm the ed25519 match. Disputes are handled in plain text but inside a PGP-encrypted ticket visible only to the moderator and the two parties, reducing the risk of exposed addresses if the server is later imaged.

User Experience and Onboarding

First-time visitors face a learning curve. The market refuses to generate a wallet QR code; you must already control Monero and know how to prove ownership by signing a supplied string. That eliminates casual browsers but also filters out low-skill buyers who historically generate the bulk of support tickets. Once inside, the layout is spartan: three columns—categories, listings, and an order panel. Vendors can embed a public key in each listing so that buyers who want to encrypt shipping info twice can fetch the key without leaving the page. Page load times average 4–5 s through Tor, faster than many competitors that overload landing pages with bloated JS. Mobile access is workable via Onion Browser on iOS or Orbot+Firefox on Android, though the captcha is still mouse-based and finicky on small screens.

Reputation, Trust and Community Feedback

Old vendor histories ported over cleanly; you can see a seller with 3 200 deals and a 4.95 / 5 rating dating back to 2020. New vendors start at zero but can pay for “tester auctions” where the first ten buyers receive discounted product in exchange for verified reviews. Forum chatter on Dread shows cautious optimism: users praise the no-BTC policy but worry the small admin team could repeat the 2021 vanishing act. No verified scam reports have surfaced so far; the one reported “exit” turned out to be a buyer who had not read the multisig timeout. Overall, trust is building faster than is typical for a relaunched market because cryptographic continuity is hard to fake.

Current Reliability and Operational Notes

Mirror-4 rotates its onion every ten days, publishing the successor address signed with the market’s long-term PGP key. Uptime monitoring over the past eight weeks shows two brief outages (under 30 min) that coincided with Tor consensus flaps, not backend issues. Deposits confirm after 10 Monero blocks—roughly 20 min—matching the original timeline. Withdrawals from finalized multisig hit the chain within two hours, indicating the staff still runs the twice-daily signing ritual. One operational hiccup: the swap provider for legacy BTC occasionally runs out of liquidity, forcing users to wait or source XMR elsewhere. The admins recommend MorphToken or LocalMonero as backups but refuse to integrate them directly to avoid custody risk.

Conclusion and Balanced Assessment

White House Market Mirror-4 is the rare relaunch that preserves both code discipline and community memory. Monero-only escrow, mandatory PGP, and rotating signed mirrors address the main attack vectors that sank earlier markets. Yet the same austere approach limits audience: Bitcoin holders and mobile-first buyers may find easier paths elsewhere. If the administrators maintain their current cadence—and history suggests they will exit gracefully rather than scam—Mirror-4 could reclaim its former niche as a mid-size but high-trust venue. For researchers, it offers a living example of how cryptographic continuity, not flashy features, sustains reputation in the darknet ecosystem.