Glossary

Definitions as used on this site. Where a term has a longer treatment, the entry links to it.

Addressing

Onion address: The 56 character string that names an onion service and contains its public key. See the anatomy page.
Base32: The encoding used for onion addresses. Thirty two symbols, being a to z and 2 to 7.
Vanity prefix: Readable opening characters produced by generating keys repeatedly until one encodes that way.
Descriptor: The record a service publishes so clients can find its introduction points. Published per key.
Introduction point: A relay a service uses so clients can start a connection to it.
Circuit: The path of relays your client builds. Rebuilt often, and different every time.
Mirror: Another address serving the same site. A separate key, not an alias. See the statement.

Cryptography

Public key: The half of a keypair you can publish. Used to verify signatures and to encrypt to the holder.
Private key: The half you keep. Anyone holding it can act as you.
Signature: Proof that a key holder produced this exact text. Two facts only. See the scope.
Fingerprint: A short hash of a public key, used for comparing keys by hand.
PGP: The common tool for encrypting and signing messages. Useful for some steps and not others. See which.
Checksum: Two bytes inside an address that catch accidental corruption. Not a defence against a deliberate lookalike.

Money

Confirmation: A block containing your transaction, plus each block on top. How many you need is a receiver policy. See the page.
Mempool: The queue of transactions waiting to be included in a block.
Network fee: What you bid for block space. Priced by transaction size, not by value.
Spread: The gap between the rate you were given and the market rate. A cost that is never itemised.
Escrow: Value held so a decision remains possible. See escrow, plainly.
Finalising early: Releasing held funds before receiving anything. Ends the only mechanism there is.
Recovery phrase: The words that are the wallet. Never given to anyone. See the statement.

This site

Statement: A claim people make, written roughly as they say it, then sorted.
Bucket: One of ALWAYS, NEVER or DEPENDS. Every statement is in exactly one.
ALWAYS: Holds in every case because arithmetic or definition forces it.
NEVER: False in every case, either mathematically or categorically.
DEPENDS: Conditional, with the conditions named on the page.
What would move it: The last section of every statement page, saying what would change the bucket.

Terms with a different meaning elsewhere

A few words carry a specific narrow sense here. Mirror means a separate onion service with its own key, not a copy that redirects. Verified is not used at all, because nothing on this site verifies anything. Working, as in awazon working link, is a phrase people search for rather than a state we assert about any address.

Where a term is used in the sense the wider world uses it, no note is made. The list above covers the ones where a reader could reasonably expect something stronger than is meant.

Words we avoid

Some terms appear on other sites and not on this one, on purpose. Verified, when nothing was verified. Official, when no authority issued anything. Trusted, which describes a feeling rather than a property. Live, which asserts a present state nobody can observe from a page.

Where those words would have gone, this site either names the actual property or says nothing. It makes some sentences longer and it keeps them true.

If a word used on a page is not here, it is being used in its ordinary sense and no special meaning is intended.