Chapter 1 of 6 / nothing loads
It worked yesterday and does not today
Ordinary, and not worth any anxiety. The version of this that should worry you is the mirror image: an address that was dead for months and has started answering again.
What it usually turns out to be
| Cause | How often | What settles it |
|---|---|---|
| The address was retired | Common | Get a current set and update your file |
| A long outage that started overnight | Common | Wait. Days is within normal |
| Your saved copy has drifted | Occasional | Compare it against a published set |
| A key rotation on the far side | Occasional | Same effect as retirement from where you sit |
| The market has ended | Rare and unknowable on day one | Wait weeks before concluding it |
Why addresses get retired
Load, pressure, key rotation, or an operational decision that nobody outside ever hears about. The reason is unavailable to you and it does not matter. What matters is that retirement is routine, expected, and that a published set is the only statement about what is in use now.
The case that runs the other way
An address that dropped out of circulation months ago and now serves a login page has not recovered. To answer on an exact onion address you need the private key it was derived from, and nothing retired comes back under the same string.
So either the key leaked, or what you are looking at is a different string and you did not read far enough to notice. The second is far more common, and it is why the check is a comparison rather than a memory.
Who this one catches
This case specifically catches people who have been at this for years. The reader most likely to be holding a long dead address is the one who feels most sure about it and is least likely to stop and compare a string they recognise. Newer readers paste from a current list every time because they have nothing memorised, which is one of the few places where knowing less protects you more.
Keeping this from happening again
- Keep the set in a file you control, with the date you wrote it down beside it.
- Compare against a published set every few weeks. Under a minute, and that is the whole maintenance burden.
- Delete what falls off rather than archiving it. An address kept in case it returns is one you will paste in six months.
- Never rely on remembering the first few characters. That is the exact habit a forgery is built around.
Why nobody announces a retirement
Because there is no channel where such an announcement would be trustworthy. Anything posted on the address that is going away can be faked by whoever is about to answer there, and anything posted elsewhere is somebody else claim. The only version that carries weight is a signed statement, and signed statements go out when they go out rather than on a schedule.
Which means the practical answer for a reader is always the same: compare your set against a published one every few weeks, on ordinary days, and treat the file you keep as the thing that is current rather than your memory of it.