Signals that a marketplace is failing

Signals that carry information

• Withdrawals slowing or stalling while deposits continue to be accepted, which is the single strongest signal and the one that precedes most exits
• Escrow terms changing in the market favour, especially pressure toward releasing payment before delivery
• Established vendors leaving in a cluster rather than individually, since they see operational problems before buyers do
• Announcements stopping entirely, particularly signed ones, while the site itself stays up
• Support silence extending across weeks rather than days

Signals that mean nothing

• A single address being unreachable, which is routine load
• Slow page loads, which is ordinary hidden service behaviour
• A rumour thread claiming an exit, since those appear continuously regardless of conditions
• An address rotation, which is maintenance and is normal
• A quiet week in announcements, as opposed to a quiet month

Weighing them together

No single signal is decisive, and the informative ones cluster. A market with slowing withdrawals, departing vendors and no signed communication is telling a consistent story. A market that was simply slow to load yesterday is telling you about the network. Treating those as the same category is how people both panic early and stay too long.

The only protection that works in advance

Keeping small balances. Every account of funds lost when a market failed reduces to the same sentence, which is that money was sitting on the market when it stopped. Deposit for the order in front of you, withdraw the rest, and the strongest failure signal in this entry becomes something you read about rather than something you experience.