Addresses
Five things in this room, and every one of them is a string of characters you will end up pasting somewhere. The string is the only part of this whole subject that is pure maths, which makes it the one place where a claim can be settled instead of argued about.
What is in this room
- What the string is made ofFifty six characters, and only some of them are ever read.
- A published list of addressesWhat a set of ten addresses claims, and what it quietly does not.
- An address that is almost rightRight at the front, right at the back, wrong in the middle.
- An address that started answering againA dead address answering is not a recovery.
- A link somebody sent youClickable text, a QR square, a shortened link. Three ways to hide a string.
The one idea underneath all five
An onion address is not assigned to anyone. It is computed from a public key, which means whoever holds the matching private key is the only party that can answer on it, and no registrar, court or hosting company can hand it to somebody else.
That is a strong guarantee and it has an exact edge. It says who can serve on a given address. It says nothing at all about whether that party is honest, whether the address you have is the one you wanted, or whether the thing you are reading came from them.
The ten in circulation
77x6lmfaxyqskpcjidkl5r7mnounjzp6fqe7oqeu3au6hsv4xgkmasad.onion7iaj3wjpffjg5acgxqqbjkerdwkcxrzetp4gnsoofaa5lukrmuhcdjad.onionatmqbitgx7g5c4gdc4t23erlpvub7c3agbmky6on6vxcfs26fuj3usqd.oniondgkozv5myc3lfpedjl2khhk6icok2xm5wmc5vg42xvbyh4fs345mopyd.onionevwigej45n3nywbn3aqdun4o6cgjyfgxf2ts7lm6no3uotxanpeuosad.onionfr6bvsrcx7ajxou7kyme5otctzdmpllum6iqootcjnwmzepuuams2tad.onionh3h66vql4ucodjre4bluwtywhoq2bjqxpgvxgv2xo2nkui5ney6gslqd.onionjcyjjcu4oocqkgxyq4d6mmbuuha5db7iz3zifhf2cm6n6m5mvogxwqyd.onionncmebasolcj2pmw5oy2bco4r65jbcqznrujtxcalz6e2b2jmhjlf44ad.onionotw35cxf2rssl23tsvtqjwj32u62q4becl2jmgvekuemptxli7gt5lyd.onionRead the page about the list before drawing conclusions from it. A published set is a statement about circulation and nothing more.
If you take one thing from this room
The five specimens in this room all reduce to one habit. Compare the whole string against a copy you already had, rather than reading the ends and deciding it looks familiar. Everything else in here is the reasoning for why that is the habit.
Two questions people run together
The first is whether the address you have is the address you meant to open. That one is settled by comparing strings and it takes five seconds. The second is whether the thing answering there is the market. That one is not settled by any amount of looking at the address, because a string is a string whoever holds the key.
Nearly every argument about link pages is two people answering different halves of that and not noticing. Somebody says a list is trustworthy because the addresses are correct. Somebody else says lists cannot be trusted because addresses get swapped. Both are right, about different questions.
| Question | Settled by | Takes |
|---|---|---|
| Is this the string I meant? | Pasting both and comparing | Five seconds |
| Is the string well formed? | Length, and an alphabet with no 0, 1, 8 or 9 | A glance |
| Is this the market? | A signature against a pinned fingerprint | A minute, plus an hour once |
| Is it up? | Opening it. Nothing else, ever | However long it takes |
Why ten and not one
Hidden services are slow to reach and easy to overload, so running the same market on several addresses spreads the load and keeps something reachable while one is having a bad day. It also lets an address be retired without taking everything down. The number moves over a year and there is no correct value for it, which is worth knowing before you read anything into a set that has grown or shrunk since last time.