The 30-year prison sentence handed to Rui-Siang Lin, the operator of the infamous Incognito Market, is more than just another darknet takedown story. Lin, who ran Incognito Market under the alias “Pharaoh,” oversaw one of the largest online narcotics operations in history, generating more than $105 million in illegal drug sales worldwide before its collapse in March 2024.

Platforms like Incognito Market are not clever experiments in decentralization. They are industrial-scale criminal enterprises, and their architects will be treated as such.

How Incognito Market Became a Global Narcotics Hub

Launched in October 2020, Incognito Market was designed to look and feel like a legitimate...