Reference / words
Words
Several of these are used loosely everywhere else, and the looseness is where a lot of bad reasoning gets in. Here each one means one thing.
Terms used on this site
| Onion address | Fifty six characters computed from a public key. Cannot be reassigned, proves nothing about who holds it |
| Published set | The addresses currently in circulation. A statement about circulation, not about safety |
| Circuit | The path your connection takes through relays. Rebuilding one is the cheapest fix on this site |
| Rate limiting | Slowing or refusing connections based on behaviour, because a hidden service cannot see identity. Looks identical to rejection |
| Fingerprint | A short hash of a public key, comparable by eye. The thing you pin. The key file itself is disposable |
| Replay | Presenting a genuine old signed statement as current. Works because signatures never expire |
| Escrow | Funds that move only when two of buyer, vendor and market sign. The market is a tiebreaker, not an owner |
| Delivery window | The period after which nothing arriving becomes meaningful and a dispute becomes appropriate |
| Finalise early | Releasing escrowed funds before delivery. The one action on an order nobody can undo |
| Confirmation | One block built on top of the block holding your transaction |
| Credited | The market deciding to treat a deposit as real. Different from the network having seen it |
| Swap | Software on your own machine replacing an address between the copy and the paste |
Two worth extra care
Verified is used here in exactly one sense: a signature checked against a fingerprint you collected independently. It does not mean an address that opened, an address somebody recommended, or an address that appeared on a list. All three are routinely called verified elsewhere, which is why the word needs pinning down.
Mirror is used loosely everywhere, including here, to mean another address reaching the same market. It does not imply a separate copy of anything, and being reachable at three addresses says nothing about how the thing behind them is built.
Phrases with nothing inside them
| If you read | Ask |
|---|---|
| Official mirror list | Official compared to what. No authority exists that could grant it |
| Verified daily | By whom, against which fingerprint, published where |
| 99 percent uptime | A measurement claim, and whoever measures has to say with what |
| Trusted vendor | Trusted by whom, on what evidence, with what at stake |
| Secure escrow | Escrow is a mechanism, not an adjective. Ask what has to sign |
| Guaranteed delivery | Guaranteed by whom, and enforced how |
None of those prove bad intent. They are claims with no content, and noticing an empty claim is a much cheaper skill than evaluating a full one.
Words this site avoids
Dark web, which names no network and describes nothing technical. Deep web, which properly means anything a search engine has not indexed and is mostly bank statements and intranets. Both turn up in the way people search, so they appear in a title here and there, and neither is used to build an argument, because neither is precise enough to carry one.