A maintenance notice
Something is down and here is a page telling you why, along with a helpful new address to use in the meantime. The explanation may even be true. The address is the part that pays for the page.
- What it is
- A page or post explaining an outage, usually with instructions
- Where you meet it
- On an address that half works, in forums, in messages
- What it settles
- Nothing unless it is signed and you check the signature
- Cannot tell you
- Whether the instructions came from the market
The specimen
The main address is offline for infrastructure work.
Please use the temporary address below.
Migrate within 24 hours. The old address will not return.
no signed block anywhere on the page
An outage notice with the two tells marked. Salmon is the deadline, which real address changes never need. Pale grey is the absence that matters more than anything present: no signature, so nothing on this page has been claimed by anyone.
Why outages are the moment
During a stretch when nothing loads, the comparison you would normally run is unavailable and everybody is looking for a way in. That is precisely when helpful addresses appear, and the timing is the manipulation rather than a coincidence.
It also flips your reasoning. Normally an unfamiliar address is suspicious. In an outage it feels like the explanation, because you already believe something has changed. The page is not persuading you of anything. You did that part yourself before you arrived.
What a genuine change looks like
| Genuine | The other kind |
|---|---|
| Signed by the key you already pinned | Unsigned, or signed by a key offered on the same page |
| Published in more than one place | One page, one post, one message |
| Long overlap, old addresses keep working | Deadline, old address described as dead already |
| No urgency at all | Act today, act now, act before you can check |
What to do while it is down
- Nothing. Waiting costs you access you did not have anyway, which makes this the cheapest instance of patience in the whole collection and the one most often skipped.
- Do not collect new addresses during an outage. Collect them on ordinary days, when several independent sources can be compared calmly.
- Ignore anything with a deadline in it for at least a day. If it was real, it will still be real tomorrow, because real changes overlap.
- Check your own file to see whether the address you were using is still in the set you wrote down.
What is worth doing before the next outage
Collect your addresses and your fingerprint on an ordinary day, when nothing is broken and several independent sources can be compared without any pressure. That single hour is what makes an outage boring instead of dangerous, because the only thing an outage can offer you is a new address, and you already have a way to test one.
- Outages last days sometimes. That is normal and says nothing about whether a market is ending.
- The set does not change because something is down. A working address and a published address are different claims.
- Announcements about outages are worth reading and not worth acting on unless signed by the key you already hold.