Tor Network v3 Onion Services: What Users Need to Know

Tor's v2 onion services were deprecated in 2021 and the final support for v2 addresses ended in 2023. All current darknet marketplace URLs use v3 addressing — but many users don't fully understand what changed and why it matters.

v2 vs v3: What Changed

Legacy v2 onion addresses were 16 characters long and were derived from the first 80 bits of the SHA-1 hash of the service's public key. The cryptographic weaknesses here were serious: SHA-1 is considered broken for collision resistance, and the 1024-bit RSA keys used for v2 services fall below modern security recommendations.

V3 onion addresses (56 characters) use Curve25519 keys (128-bit security level), SHA3-256 for address derivation, and include a version number and checksum in the address itself. The cryptographic security improvement is substantial — breaking a v3 address requires approximately 2^128 computational operations, which is computationally infeasible with any foreseeable technology.

What This Means for Nexus Market

All Nexus Market onion addresses are v3 format — recognizable by their 56-character length. Any link claiming to be a Nexus address with fewer than 56 characters is definitively a phishing attempt or a legacy URL that will not resolve.

Current verified v3 addresses are available on our Access Page with PGP verification instructions.