I think that’s the best theory so far. Or at least it’s part of the tactic.
The one and only reason Archetyp was the biggest target was because of one thing: fentanyl. Archetyp was one of the only large darkweb markets that allowed the sale of George Floyd's drug of choice.
The way this takedown happened was that a newer moderator failed at OPSEC, was taken in and exchanged their private GPG keypair for a better deal or lesser sentence. The feds then used that private keypair to fake communication with the rest of the admin team for presumably weeks - months. Archetyp went under "Maintenance" on Wednesday or Thursday last week after they raided the main site admin's home. They did this to stop vendors from getting spooked at a dead site, so they could finish up their raids and collect all of the information they could since they were on a timer now.
The funniest part? The feds used the main site admin's PGP key to put out an update on the maintenance window, at which point a very sharp eyed-user noticed that the PGP key's signature was SHA512 and not SHA256. That bit at the top of a signed message:
Código:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512
The feds were paying someone for a week to help run a darkweb drug website and they even fucked that up. Another eagle-eyed user noticed that the update post accidentally included a German character which immediately caused some vendors to DFE and tidy up. The compromised mod also controlled a subdread on Dread forums, so a fed was also being paid to be a janny for Europeans talking about shrooms.
Most darkweb markets prohibit fentanyl because it is
that dangerous, but Archetyp didn't which I believe made it a much larger target compared to some of the other sites.
The fed operation website was a clearnet site which was registered a few days ago (with an address in Bedfordshire, England) with that gay Cyberpunk video uploaded. Then yesterday morning they replaced the site with the seizure notice and then released a Europol statement a few hours later. A lot of users before the Europol statement thought it was an exit scam because the Cyberpunk video is
that gay.