Why no link page shows you real Nexus Market uptime
Somewhere between the address and the "online" badge, the number stops being true. This page is about what an availability figure next to an onion can and cannot mean, and what to test instead.
What a number like 99.2% actually describes
An uptime figure beside an onion describes one machine, on one circuit, at a moment that has passed. To produce it, something had to connect to the address, count the result, and remember it. The connection came from one location, through one entry path, at one second in time. Your circuit is built fresh the moment you paste the address, from your location, through your entry path, at your second in time. The two circuits share the word "connection" and very little else.
Three consequences follow, and all three are the reason the number misleads:
- It is other people's network, not yours.A 99% measured from a server in one region says almost nothing about your connection from yours. The onion's entry points are in different regions precisely because paths that work there fail here, and a single probe location cannot see the difference.
- It is a past moment, and onions change.The figure is correct for the window it was computed over and silent about everything since. An entry point that came up ten minutes after the probe window closed was offline in the number and alive in reality. The gap between the probe and your click is where the number lies by omission.
- It is produced by the same kind of page that sells you the address.A link page that can probe the onion can also watch you. The figure is the receipt for a service you did not ask for: someone else's script, on someone else's timer, between you and the market.
The badge problem
The "online" dot next to an address is the same measurement reduced to a color. It answers a question the visitor did not ask, with data from a path the visitor will not use, at a resolution the visitor cannot see. What the dot does answer, accurately, is a question about the page: someone, somewhere, is checking that address on a schedule. Green or red, you now know more about the checker than about the market.
There is a version of the dot that is honest, and it is also useless: "unknown." A page that has never probed the onion can only say unknown, and a link page full of unknown dots is a reference, not a monitor. The trade is the point of the page, and the pages that solve it by adding a green dot have quietly changed what they are.
What actually predicts whether the address will open for you
Nothing on the page. The only test with a result that belongs to you is the one that takes the address from the page into your browser:
Paste the address, fresh identity
New circuit, your path, your moment. This is the test's control condition, and it costs five seconds.
Give it a full minute
Circuit build plus the market's own check screen sits at 30 to 60 seconds on a normal line. A "stuck" page at 20 seconds is not a failed test, it is a running one.
If it stalls, run the other two addresses
Two of three opening means your path to the third is the problem, and you now have a working entry, which was the actual question all along.
If all three stall, check Tor itself
A browser that cannot reach any onion is not a market problem. The not loading page has the nine fixes in order, and the bridge item is the one that fixes the most "the market is down" reports that are really "the network is filtered."
So what to do with the green dots you see elsewhere
Read them as they are: a measurement from another machine, at another time, on another path. They are not wrong, which is the trap. A 99.2% that is true about its probe and false about your circuit is a worse error than no number at all, because it arrives with confidence attached. The dot that should be next to every onion address is the one in your address bar, 56 characters long, and the only test that counts is opening it. You can start with any of the three on the mirrors page.