Darknet market glossary

The terms that show up on the market, in its announcements, and in the threads about it, in plain words. No definitions, just what each one does in practice.

.onion address: A 56 character name for a service that lives inside the Tor network, ending in .onion. It is not a domain registered with anyone; it is a public key, and the service sits behind its entry nodes. Browsers that can route through Tor resolve it directly; everything else needs a relay in between, and that relay sees the traffic.
Tor: The network. Your traffic passes through three volunteer relays before it reaches its destination, and each relay knows only its neighbor. For an onion, the third hop is the onion's own entry point, which is the only machine on the path that knows the full address.
Circuit: One specific chain of three relays, built fresh each time you ask for it. Slow or failed loads are usually circuit problems, which is why a new identity and a fresh circuit are the first fix in almost every troubleshooting list.
New identity: Tor Browser's way of starting over: new circuit, cleared cookies, fresh window. Ctrl+Shift+I on desktop. Use it before the market and after, so your session is not carrying baggage from whatever you did before.
Bridge: An unpublished relay that a filtered network cannot easily block, because it is not on the public list. Configured in the browser's settings when the normal relays are throttled or cut. Pluggable transports are the modern form: the traffic is wrapped so it does not fingerprint as Tor.
Clearnet: The regular internet, the part that is not Tor. A clearnet page about an onion market is a page about the market, not the market. The useful ones exist to carry the address to you safely. The ones that ask for your password are a different animal.
PGP: The encryption standard for keys and signed messages. On the market it does two jobs: encrypting your shipping details for the vendor, and signing the market's own announcements, which is what makes an address change announcement verifiable. A message signed with the market's key cannot be faked without the key.
Mnemonic phrase: The list of words generated at registration that can restore your account. It is the only key material that is not held by the market, which is the entire point. Paper, private, tested once. Screenshots are a backup for the phrase, not a place to keep it.
Escrow, multisig: The order's coins sit in an address that requires more than one signature to spend, until the trade completes. You, the vendor, and the market each hold part of the decision. It is the mechanism that turns "I will ship it" into a structure where not shipping has a cost.
Auto finalize: The timer on every order. It starts when the vendor ships and ends when the market treats silence as receipt and releases the escrow. Confirm on time or dispute before it runs; the countdown is on the order page and it does not pause for weekends.
Dispute: The lock. Opened by the buyer before finalize, it freezes the escrow and hands the thread to moderation. Evidence lives in the market's own chat, so nothing needs to be exported. Outcomes: refund, split, or release to the vendor.
Vendor level and fee tier: Where the vendor sits in the volume and rating scale. It sets the fee the vendor pays per sale, from 1.1% at the top to 5% for new profiles, and it gates what the vendor can list. A low tier on an old profile is information; so is a high tier on a fresh one.
Buyer level: Where you sit after your order history. Level 2 is the point the buyer fee drops from 2.5% to zero, and it is reached at a modest volume. The level is per account, so it follows you across all three addresses.
Relay block or filtered network: A network that notices Tor traffic and slows or drops it, by port range or by pattern. The symptom is everything loading at walking pace or not at all. The fix is a bridge, set once, and after that the filter stops being your problem.
Entry point: The onion's edge, the first machine your circuit reaches. The market runs several, in different regions, which is why three addresses exist: they are the same market from different doors, and your path decides which door opens fastest.
Phishing, in this context: A page that is not the market, built to look like it, whose only working part is a password field. The tells are the missing check sequence, the wrong address, and the eagerness. The fix is not vigilance, it is the checklist: length, prefix, symbols, last six, first page. Run it every session and the genre loses its surprise.

Terms you will see on the market itself

Shipped is the vendor marking the order as sent. Completed is your confirmation, or the timer. Flagged vendor is a new profile under a minimum order count before the flag lifts. Referral credit is a fee reduction granted through a referral, capped, and denominated in fee, not cash. Withdrawal queued means submitted and waiting on the network, which is a normal state, not a stuck one. The fees page and the vendors page use all of these in context.