Glossary

The vocabulary you will see in Nexus Market support tickets, announcements, and operator notes. Defined for operators, not for marketing.

v3 onion

The current generation of Tor hidden service addresses, 56 characters of base32 ending in .onion. The address embeds the public key, so spoofing requires breaking Ed25519. All Nexus Market mirrors are v3 onions. Older v2 addresses were deprecated by the Tor Project and stopped resolving in 2021.

Multisig escrow

An order contract that requires N of M signatures to release funds. Nexus uses 2 of 3, where buyer, vendor, and platform each hold one key. Two of the three must sign for funds to move. This is the architectural fix for exit-scam risk. Even if the platform vanishes overnight, buyer and vendor can co-sign a release without it.

Stealth address

A one-time recipient address derived from a Monero wallet view key. Each transaction generates a fresh stealth address, so observers on the chain cannot link multiple payments to the same wallet. Stealth addresses are why XMR transactions do not accumulate a footprint the way Bitcoin transactions do.

Ring signature

A cryptographic signature scheme that hides the actual signer among a set of decoys. In Monero, every transaction is signed with a ring of 11 possible inputs, only one of which is real. Observers cannot determine which input was actually spent. This is what hides the sender on the Monero chain.

RingCT

Ring confidential transactions. The Monero feature that hides the amount of a transaction in addition to the sender and recipient. Combined with stealth addresses and ring signatures, RingCT means a Monero transaction reveals nothing useful to a passive observer. It is the difference between a public ledger and a confidential ledger.

Tor descriptor

The directory record that tells the Tor network how to reach a hidden service. Each onion address publishes a descriptor to a small set of directory authorities every hour or so. If a descriptor publish fails, the onion becomes temporarily unreachable until the next attempt. This is the most common cause of brief mirror outages.

Exit consensus

The shared agreement among Tor directory authorities about which relays are part of the current network. Consensus is rebuilt every hour. Consensus failures cause descriptor unreachability and routing problems, and are one of the few outage categories that affect all Tor users simultaneously rather than per-onion.

PGP timestamp

A short signed message that confirms a piece of content (a mirror page, an announcement, a roster) was authored at a specific time by the holder of a given key. Nexus mirrors publish a fresh PGP timestamp on the login page every 24 hours. Verifying the timestamp is the canonical way to confirm a mirror is current and not a phishing replay.

Master key

The long-term PGP key that signs every official Nexus surface. RSA 4096, key ID 0x7F2A0A9D, fingerprint ending in 0A9D. The master key has not rotated since the platform opened in 2023. Subkeys for support, vendor desk, dispute panel, and security disclosure rotate quarterly.

Subkey

A PGP key bound to the master key, used for routine encryption and signing operations without exposing the master signing material. Nexus issues separate subkeys for each support function so that compromising one role does not compromise the master. Subkey rotations are signed by the master and witnessed independently.

Cross-signature

An additional signature on a key, made by a separate witness key, that attests to the validity of the first key. The Nexus master key carries cross-signatures from three independent witnesses. Cross-signatures mean you do not have to trust any single source for the master key import.

Bond

An upfront deposit posted by a vendor when applying. Held in multisig with the platform and refunded after the probation window or forfeit on the first confirmed scam complaint. The bond is a commitment device, it signals that the vendor expects to operate long enough to recover the deposit, which selects against single-shot scammers.

Probation window

The first set of orders a new vendor processes under additional platform supervision. Bond cannot be refunded until the window closes cleanly. The window is shorter for vendors with verifiable reputation imports from prior markets, never waived entirely.

Dispute panel

A rotating group of long-tenured staff who rule on order disputes. The same composition never sits twice in a row. Rulings are written, signed, and attached to the vendor profile permanently. There is no private deal-making and no reversal except through formal appeal within 14 days.

Phishing clone

A pixel-perfect copy of a legitimate login page, served from a different address, designed to capture credentials. The only reliable detection is signature verification. Visual inspection of the UI does not work because clones are identical.

Freshness window

The validity period of a signed timestamp. Nexus timestamps are valid for 24 hours from the signed time. A timestamp older than 36 hours is treated as a verification failure even if the signature itself is cryptographically valid. The freshness window is what proves the gateway is current and not a stale mirror left online by an attacker.

Tails

A live operating system that boots from USB and forgets everything on shutdown. Designed for high-stakes Tor sessions where leaving no trace on the host is a hard requirement. Recommended for any vendor session that touches shipping addresses or vendor key material.

Whonix

A two-VM operating system for Tor isolation. The gateway VM runs Tor, the workstation VM runs the user applications. The workstation cannot leak the host IP even if compromised, because it has no direct network access. Recommended alongside Tails for hardened sessions.

Onion routing

The technique that gives Tor its name. Each packet is encrypted in nested layers, peeled off one at a time as the packet hops through three relays. No single relay sees both the source and the destination. This is the foundation of Tor's anonymity property.

Hidden service

A service that runs only on the Tor network, addressable via an onion address. Hidden services do not expose IP addresses on either end of the connection. Nexus Market is a hidden service. There is no clearnet path to the platform, and any clearnet domain claiming to be Nexus is impersonation.

Chain analysis

The practice of correlating Bitcoin transactions across the public ledger to identify wallet ownership and transaction flows. Vendors include Chainalysis, TRM, and Elliptic, who sell correlation data to law enforcement and exchanges in real time. Chain analysis is the reason Nexus defaults to Monero rather than Bitcoin.