Matrix Homeserver on Tor Onion VPS
Matrix's federation model is more onion-friendly than Mastodon's because Matrix supports HTTPS-over-Tor federation natively in Synapse. AnubizHost provides VPS preconfigured for Synapse running as a v3 onion with federation routed through Tor SOCKS to other onion homeservers.
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Synapse Onion Configuration
homeserver.yaml configures server_name as your onion address. Federation listener binds to localhost; nginx in front terminates the onion. Outbound federation uses federation_client_minimum_tls_version with Tor SOCKS proxy configured per-destination.
End-to-End Encryption
Matrix E2EE (Olm/Megolm) is preserved regardless of transport. Onion routing adds metadata protection on top of E2EE: the homeserver does not see plaintext, and Tor obscures the homeserver's location. This is a defense-in-depth posture.
Federation Realities
Onion Matrix homeservers can federate with each other reliably. Onion-to-clearnet federation works for clearnet servers that have configured Tor support; this is a small subset. Most onion Matrix deployments end up as private federations among a known set of peers.
Crypto Billing
BTC and XMR.
Related: Mastodon onion, Nostr relay, Cwtch server, XMPP over Tor, Tor hosting parent.
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