The words, in plain language
Black Ops Market addresses
All three open the same market. Copy one and paste it into Tor Browser.
blackops5l63qnwnmlnsfvtlu66md3x3vp3fdtpna42eq7ozujr67hid.onionblackops6kignp3eddmvqcfkjzf6qr6haxbmkypc2xtqlnhuu4ak4dqd.onionblackops27m32abqvbhnyswgazqawxqbznbzkkkv5sjo7gve2ndpsdad.onion
The vocabulary around a market like Black Ops is small, and it does a lot of work. Once the words stop being mysterious, most of the “is this normal” questions answer themselves.
- .onion address
- A 56-character address that resolves only inside the Tor network, to a hidden service. The address itself encodes the destination; no ordinary DNS server can see it or map it. One character different is a different destination, with no error in between.
- Mirror
- A separate .onion address that opens the same service. Markets run several so that one slow or blocked endpoint does not take the whole storefront with it. Mirrors are equal: same data, same accounts, different doors.
- Circuit
- The path your connection takes: three random relays in series. Built fresh for new connections, which is why the same address can load for one person and hang for another at the same moment, and why a retry usually fixes a hang.
- Relay
- A machine in the Tor network that passes traffic from one hop to the next. Most of them are run by volunteers, and a small fraction are slow, filtered, or simply having a bad hour.
- Guard node
- The first relay in your circuit, the one that sees your real IP address. Tor keeps the same guard for a while on purpose: a stable entrance is harder to track than a wandering one.
- Exit node
- The last relay in a circuit, the one that touches the outside web. It does not matter for .onion destinations, because hidden services live inside the network, but it is the reason a regular website can see your location approximately.
- Bridge
- A Tor relay that does not announce itself in the public list. When a network filters known Tor entrances, a bridge lets the connection start anyway. You paste a bridge line into Tor Browser under Settings.
- Clearnet
- The regular internet, everything that is not Tor. A clearnet copy of a market is a website about the market, and the distance between the two is where the fakes live.
- Gateway, .watch / .to
- A clearnet website that fetches an onion through a middle server and shows you the result. Convenient for a glance, fatal for a login: the middle server carries your full traffic, including the password you type.
- Checksum, FQDN
- The self-checking part of the .onion address. The address is designed so that a corrupted copy usually does not resolve at all, which is how Tor tells you a mistyped address is wrong. It does not tell you which character is the problem, so comparing the tail by eye still matters.
- Queue
- The waiting screen at the market’s entrance: a plain page with a spinner and a request not to refresh. The market meters its entrances, and the queue is the meter. Reload it and you rejoin at the tail.
- Escrow
- The market holding your payment for you until the order’s conditions are met, then releasing it to the vendor. You send coins to an escrow address, never to a vendor wallet, and the release line in the order is worth one full read.
- Vendor rep
- The public record of a vendor’s orders and ratings. The headline number is the weakest part of it; the pace of recent reviews and the oldest ones tell you whether the number has a history behind it.
- Invite
- How accounts on closed markets have historically been created: an existing member vouches for a new one. The market stays small on purpose, and the queue for an invite is a feature of that, not a bug to be shortcut.
- Two-factor code
- A one-time number from an app on your phone, added to the password at login. The app generates the code locally, so it works offline, and losing the phone without a backup of the secret is the one scenario to keep a written backup for.
Still getting lost in the vocabulary? The FAQ uses the same words in the situations they actually appear in.