For years, dark web markets and the law enforcement agencies that combat them have been locked into a cycle of raid, rinse, repeat: For every online black market destroyed, another has always been there to take its place. But rarely has a dominant dark web market been busted by a massive law enforcement operation only to rise from the ashes half a decade later and regain its top spot—a feat that may very soon be achieved by AlphaBay, the once and future king of the contraband crypto-economy.

In July of 2017, a global law enforcement sting known as Operation Bayonet took down AlphaBay’s sprawling narcotics-and-cybercrime bazaar, seizing the site’s central server in Lithuania and arresting its creator, Alexandre Cazes, outside his home in Bangkok. Yet in August of last year, AlphaBay’s number-two administrator and security specialist, publicly known only as DeSnake, suddenly reappeared, annou