Words
Defined as used here, 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. Not 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 repeatedly until an address starts with chosen characters. Cheap for a short prefix, impossible for a whole address, and the reason forgeries match the opening. |
| Replay | Presenting a genuine old signed statement as if it were 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 where both work. Routine, and never announced with a deadline. |
| Grace window | That overlap, which exists so an occasional visitor sees old and new at once and can update what they saved. |
| 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. |
| Subaddress | A one time destination a wallet issues per payment, so two payments cannot be linked by where they went. Reusing one defeats the purpose. |
| Ring signature | Hides which input was actually spent among decoys, which is what conceals the sender on the Monero chain. |
| The boundary | Where money converts from something with a record into something without one. Where nearly all real world privacy is lost, and not on the chain. |
| Rate limiting | Slowing or refusing a connection based on behaviour, since a hidden service cannot see identity. It looks identical to rejection, which causes a lot of confusion. |
| Interstitial | The checking your browser screen. It protects the service from automated load and provides you no protection at all. |
Terms this site avoids
Dark web, which names no network and describes nothing technical. Deep web, which means anything not indexed by a search engine and is mostly bank statements and intranets. Both appear in search queries, so they turn up in a page title or two here, and neither is used in an explanation because neither is precise enough to build an argument on.