ALWAYS
Nothing in this section is a policy. Policies belong in DEPENDS, because somebody can change them next week and often does. What is collected here holds for a duller reason. The maths gives no other option.
That makes these the least interesting statements on the site and the most useful ones to have straight. They are the fixed points you measure the rest against. When somebody tells you an awazon onion link works differently, one of these is the thing they are contradicting.
The ten
- An onion address is 56 characters
- The alphabet has no 0, 1, 8 or 9
- Case makes no difference
- The address is the key itself
- Every character weighs the same
- Each mirror is its own keypair
- Onion addresses resolve only inside Tor
- A signature proves two things and stops
- Outside escrow there is no process
- A confirmed payment cannot be recalled
Four of them are about the address
Length, alphabet, case, and the fact that the string is the key rather than a label for one. Those four together are the whole reason an awazon market address can be checked at all without asking anybody. You do not need a registry, a certificate or a third party. You need to be able to count and compare.
People underuse this. The address is one of the few things in the entire arrangement that verifies itself, and most of the effort goes into checking things that cannot be verified instead, like whether a forum post looks trustworthy.
Three are about money
Escrow, finality, and what a signature covers. These get grouped together because they share a shape. Each one describes a boundary, and on the far side of the boundary there is no mechanism at all. Not a slow mechanism or an unfair one. None.
A payment sent outside escrow does not enter a worse process, it enters no process. A confirmed transaction is not hard to reverse, it has no reverse. Knowing where those edges sit is more valuable than any advice about who to trust.
The rest
Tor-only resolution and mirror independence. Both are about scope. An onion name means nothing outside the network that defines it, and one address vouches for exactly one key and no others.
How to argue with this section
Bring a case where the statement is false. Not a case where it is inconvenient or where somebody got confused, an actual counterexample. Every page here ends with the specific counterexample that would move it, and for most of them the honest answer is that the address format would have to change or a signature scheme would have to break.
That is not arrogance, it is what ALWAYS means under the sorting rule. If a counterexample were easy the statement would have gone in DEPENDS and the counterexample would be listed as a condition.
The mistake this section prevents
There is a specific error these ten pages exist to head off. It is treating a fixed property as a matter of degree. Somebody looks at an awazon market link and asks whether it looks about right. Length is not about right, it is 56 or it is wrong. The alphabet does not usually exclude the digit one, it excludes it.
Once a fixed property gets treated as approximate, checking stops being checking. It becomes a vibe. The value of this section is that ten things on the list can be settled with counting and comparison, and none of them need anyone's opinion.
Order to read them in
The address four first, because they are the ones you use every time you open the browser. Then the money three, because they set the edges of what can go wrong after you have arrived. The last two, scope and independence, matter most when somebody is telling you that a different address is fine.