addresses ยท post 04 of 7 in this channel
What changes in a WeTheNorth address and what never does
Two different things get called the address changing, and they are not the same thing at all. Pulling them apart fixes a lot of confusion.
the three wethenorth market addresses
hn2paw7zfvndw3dovycegeqmvvnf4pl67b3g2p7pohjlzavloosh73id.onionhn2paw7zrgujyhnt6mgxlt2q6uhgbke4itpqitxhyfbumq3wtnckbuyd.onionhn2paw7zadwkcra3qzv5e4q547i7e5lvxm62cfxqftuqdu7moiu2ceyd.onionprinted the way they were handed over. no labels, no numbering, nothing here says which one to try first. this feed never opens them, so it has no status light, no percentage and no date of checking to give you.
the string itself never changes
An onion address is not edited. There is no version two of a given string, no small correction, no character quietly swapped out. The address is what the key produces, and the key does not drift.
So if you are looking at a wtn market address that is almost the one you remember, differing by two or three characters, that is not an update. That is a different address, and somebody wanted it to look like the one you remember.
what does change is which addresses answer
A string stays valid text forever. Whether anything is listening behind it is another matter entirely, and that can stop at any moment.
This is the real meaning of an address going bad. The characters did not change. The service behind them stopped responding to them.
and the set can change
Sets of published addresses get added to and retired from. A market can bring up a new onion service and publish it, and can let an old one go.
When that happens, nothing tells you. There is no forwarding, no redirect and no notice, because a redirect from a dead onion service is not a thing that exists. The old address simply stops answering and stays silent.
why this matters for how you store them
If you understood the address as a name, you would keep one and expect it to last. Names are defended and renewed and forwarded, so that model feels safe.
If you understand it as a key that some service currently answers to, you keep the whole set, you expect churn, and you know where to get a fresh set from when your copy goes quiet. The post on where people get them is about that last part, which is the hard one.
a small test of your own thinking
If an address you saved a long time ago stops opening, what is your first thought? If it is that the market is gone, you are still treating the string as a name.
One address going quiet says something about that one address. It does not say anything about the other two, and it does not say anything about the market.
The reverse test is just as useful. If an address you saved opens perfectly, what have you learned? That something answered. Not that it was the same something as last time, and not that the address was ever the right one.
replies
a reader askedMy old WeTheNorth link stopped working. Is the market down?
the answerOne address not answering tells you about one address. Try the other two in the block above. If all three are silent, you still have not learned that the market is gone, only that your copy of the set is no longer useful.
a reader askedWill an old address redirect me to a new one?
the answerNo. There is no mechanism for an onion service to forward to another one after it has stopped. Nothing anywhere will hand you a replacement automatically.
a reader askedSo should I check my saved addresses regularly?
the answerThis feed does not check addresses and does not tell you to build a checking habit around them. What it suggests is holding the full set rather than one favourite, so that churn is survivable rather than dramatic.
what this post is not Not a change log. This feed does not track when addresses appear or retire, and it publishes no history of the set beyond the three strings it holds.