Tor Onion Handbook

A short handbook on the Tor network, Monero privacy, vendor reputation, and resilience under denial of service.

A short handbook on the Tor network, Monero privacy, vendor reputation on marketplaces, and how hidden services stay reachable under denial-of-service pressure. Four articles, all plain-words, no marketing.

Articles

• How Tor Circuits Are Built: Guards, Middles, and Exits
  What actually happens inside the Tor client when you open a page. The three-hop circuit, why guard relays change rarely, and what stays the same across requests.
• Ring Signatures: What Makes Monero's Ledger Different
  Why Monero transactions do not look like Bitcoin transactions on the chain, and what ring signatures, stealth addresses, and confidential transactions actually do.
• Reading a Vendor's Reputation Before You Place an Order
  A working buyer's guide to the five fields that actually matter on a darknet market vendor profile, and how to read them without falling for hype.
• What Happens to a Tor Hidden Service During a Denial-of-Service Wave
  What users see, what operators do, and why mirror rotation is the realistic answer rather than a heroic single-address defence.

External references

Companion guides on GitHub Pages cover onion verification, mirror rotation, multisig escrow, and crypto payments. A working example of a marketplace using these properties is the Nexus Market directory. The protocol-level reference is the Tor Project overview.