Opening the market, step by step

The steps, in order

1. Install Tor Browser from torproject.org. torproject.org is the only source. Not mirrors, not app stores, not a "Tor Browser" buried on page four of search results. The Tor project publishes a build for desktop and one for Android. The build is signed, and a build with a signature you checked is a different animal than one from a directory listing. You do not have to memorize the procedure, but knowing it exists changes how you treat the download. Full walk-through: Tor Browser, set up properly.
2. Paste the address from the block above into the address bar. All of it, 56 characters, nothing in front, nothing behind. No http://, no https://, and no gateway in front of it. A gateway is a clearnet domain that translates .onion for browsers without Tor. It works, and it also sees every request you make, including your login. If the address was typed by hand, one wrong character and the circuit goes somewhere else entirely. Paste. That is the rule, and the rule exists because v3 addresses are 56 characters long and one letter of drift is a stranger's site.
3. Wait out the Access Queue. After the circuit settles, a spinner appears with the text "Do not refresh the page. Please wait... you are being forwarded to the market." Do not refresh. Refreshing restarts your place in line, and the line is real, not decorative. The wait runs from a couple of seconds to a couple of minutes, and the spread is normal. A hot mirror under load takes longer. Let it sit. If it stops being a queue and starts being a failure, the page on that link sorts out which is which.
4. Click the broken circle. The next screen is the DDOS Protection captcha: "Are you not a Robot? Click the broken circle (the one with a cut.)" There is a row of circles, one of them has a cut in it, that is the one. The Captcha Timeout bar runs 24 seconds. A wrong click gives a fresh captcha. If the bar empties first, the screen shows "THINK OF WHAT YOU HAVE DONE!" and a new captcha arrives after about a minute. The bar is not a suggestion, it is the limit. Read the circles before the seconds start eating the margin.
5. Check the storefront, then check the address again. The front page is an Amazon-style storefront: clean category blocks, product cards with pictures, reviews carrying a verified purchase badge, a checkout that reads like a checkout. That is the market. Now the part people skip: look at the last six characters of the address in the address bar and compare them with the block above. Six characters, not the whole string. If they match, the circuit is where it should be. Verification detail: verify the mirror before you trust it.

How you know it went right

Four things have to line up, and they are cheap to check in order. The queue screen appeared, with its spinner and the "Do not refresh" line. The captcha appeared, with the circles and the 24 second bar. The storefront loaded: categories, product cards, a checkout that makes sense. And the last six characters of the address match the mirror you pasted. All four, in that order, and the session is the market. An account login, a two-factor prompt, an escrow notice on an order: those are the market's own furniture, not evidence of anything. The evidence is the address bar.

How you know it went wrong

Three tells, and each has a different fix.

• A login form in a plain window. "Welcome To Awazon Market. Use This Page To Login Or register" sitting on an ordinary page, no queue, no captcha, no onion in the address bar. The market has no clearnet site, no phone, no email. A clearnet page with that login form is a clone, built to catch exactly the person reading this sentence. what the login looks like, real and fake.
• The last six characters do not match. The page looks plausible, the circuit connected, and still the address drifted. That is not the mirror you chose. Do not type a password into a storefront whose address you cannot account for.
• The design is off. No category blocks, no product cards, a layout that feels like a landing page waiting for a business model. The market's storefront is specific. A lookalike with a nice logo and a vague hero section is a lookalike.