Tor Tutorials

Onion v3 Addresses Explained

If you've noticed .onion addresses are now 56 characters long (like duckduckgogg42xjoc72x3sjasowoarfbgcmvfimaftt6twagswzczad.onion), that's because the Tor network upgraded to version 3 onion services. This guide explains what changed, why it matters, and how v3 addresses work.

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v2 vs v3 Onion Addresses

v2 (deprecated) — 16 characters. Used RSA-1024 keys. Vulnerable to attacks. No longer supported since October 2021.
v3 (current) — 56 characters. Uses ED25519 keys. Stronger cryptography, better authentication, improved privacy.

If you see a 16-character .onion address, it no longer works. All legitimate onion services now use v3.

How v3 Addresses Are Generated

A v3 .onion address is derived from the service's ED25519 public key:

Generate an ED25519 key pair
The public key (32 bytes) + checksum + version byte = 35 bytes
Base32-encode the 35 bytes = 56 characters
Append .onion

This means the .onion address IS the public key — you can verify you're connecting to the right service cryptographically. No certificate authorities needed.

Vanity Onion Addresses

Want an address that starts with a recognizable word? Tools like mkp224o can generate vanity v3 addresses:

mkp224o mysite

This will generate addresses starting with "mysite" — like mysitexyz...onion. The longer the vanity prefix, the longer it takes to generate:

5 characters: seconds to minutes
6 characters: minutes to hours
7 characters: hours to days
8+ characters: days to weeks (or more)

Facebook's vanity address (facebookwkhpilne...) reportedly took significant compute time to generate.

Get Your .onion Address with AnubizHost

When you order Tor hosting from AnubizHost, we generate your v3 .onion address automatically and configure the hidden service for you. Want a vanity address? We can generate custom prefixes as part of the setup.

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