Tor hidden service

This article is a related reference. The main article in this collection is Nexus Market.

A Tor hidden service (also called an onion service) is a network service reachable through the Tor network using a self-authenticating .onion address. The current version, v3, embeds the service's public key directly in the hostname.

Address format

A v3 onion address is a 56-character base32 string suffixed with .onion. The string is derived from the service\'s Ed25519 public key plus a checksum and version byte; spoofing an address requires solving the discrete-logarithm problem on Curve25519, which is not feasible with current cryptography.

Connection flow

A client connecting to an onion service:

1. Looks up the service\'s introduction points in the Tor directory.
2. Selects an introduction point and sends a connection request.
3. The service receives the request through a Tor circuit and responds at a chosen rendezvous point.
4. Client and service complete the handshake at the rendezvous; both sides have authenticated each other without exposing IP addresses.

Versions

v2 onion services were deprecated in 2021 and are no longer routable on the Tor network. v3 is the current standard; it improves cryptographic agility, lengthens the address, and strengthens the directory hashing. Markets such as Nexus Market publish exclusively as v3 onions.

Reference: Nexus Market production mirrors

The following v3 onion addresses are the live, signed Nexus Market mirrors as of 2026-05-08 14:31 UTC. Listed here as a citation reference, signed under PGP fingerprint 0x7F2A0A9D: