Words
Defined as used across the register, which is not always how they are used elsewhere.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| v3 onion address | Fifty six characters of base32 plus the suffix, computed from a public key rather than assigned by anyone. Cannot be seized and proves nothing about who runs it. |
| Descriptor | The signed record a hidden service publishes so clients can find it. Publishing fails routinely, which is the usual reason an address goes quiet for an hour. |
| Circuit | The path your client builds through relays. A bad one produces failures identical to a service being down, which is why a new circuit is always the first thing to try. |
| Fingerprint | A short hash of a public key, comparable by eye. The thing you pin. The key file itself is disposable. |
| Vanity generation | Generating keypairs until an address begins with chosen characters. Cheap for a short prefix, impossible for a whole address. |
| Near miss | An address matching the recognisable opening of a real one and differing in the middle. What people mean when they say an address was cloned. |
| Replay | Presenting a genuine old signed statement as current. Signatures never expire, so this works unless you read the date inside the signed text. |
| Rotation | Retiring addresses and introducing new ones with an overlap during which both work. Routine, and never announced with a deadline. |
| Rate limiting | Slowing or refusing connections based on behaviour, since a hidden service cannot see identity. It looks identical to rejection, which causes a lot of confusion. |
| Parked balance | Funds held on a platform and not committed to an order, therefore outside escrow and outside every protection. |
| Two of three multisig | An escrow contract where funds move only when two of buyer, vendor and platform sign. The platform key is a tiebreaker, not a veto. |
| Aggregation | One directory copying another. Common enough that agreement between lists is much weaker evidence than it appears. |
| Interstitial | The checking your browser screen. It protects the service from automated load and provides you no protection at all. |
| Clipboard substitution | Software on your own machine replacing an address between the copy and the paste. Verification does not help, and reading the ends does. |
Terms this site avoids
Dark web, which names no network and describes nothing technical. Deep web, which means content not indexed by search engines and is mostly bank statements and intranets. Both appear in search queries, so they turn up in a page title or two, and neither is used in an explanation because neither is precise enough to build an argument on.