How mirror rotation actually works
The mechanics behind cycling onion addresses, and the misunderstandings that make readers panic about a routine operation.
Rotation is the topic this desk fields the most questions about, and almost every question rests on the same wrong assumption, which is that an address changing means something went wrong.
The mechanic
New v3 addresses are generated, signed under the newsroom verified fingerprint, and added to the production pool. Addresses being retired do not vanish at the moment the new ones appear. They serve normally through a grace window, then serve a signed notice instead of the login screen, then stop answering. The overlap is the entire design. It exists so a reader who checks in once a month sees old and new on the roster at the same time.
What it changes for you
| An open session | Nothing. Session state is shared across the pool, so a rotation does not log anyone out and does not need you to do anything. |
|---|---|
| An order in escrow | Nothing. Escrow contracts are not tied to the address you happened to arrive through. |
| Your saved addresses | This is the one that matters. An address you saved before a rotation may now be retired, and retired addresses are the ones that get picked up and reused by other people. |
| Your bookmarks | Bookmark this newsroom rather than an onion. A bookmark to a specific address is a bookmark with an expiry date you cannot see. |
Why bother at all
An address that has been public for a long time accumulates attention that has nothing to do with users. Scrapers, stale bookmarks, abandoned gateways, and whatever flooding is currently pointed at it. The ratio of junk to real traffic gets worse the longer an address lives, and at some point a fresh address serves readers better than the familiar one does.
The secondary effect is that a moving target is expensive to attack. A phishing operator who builds a convincing clone around a specific address has to rebuild when the address stops being the one people look for, and someone flooding an address is flooding something that will stop mattering.
What rotation is not
It is not a sign of trouble. It is not an emergency. It never requires you to act inside a deadline, and any message telling you to migrate within some number of hours is a forgery, because real rotations run long overlaps precisely so nobody has to hurry.
It is also not a substitute for verification. Arriving at a current address tells you nothing on its own, because addresses are not self certifying. The signature is what tells you the door leads where you think it does, and that check is worth running on every address, current or not.
Verified working Nexus Market mirrors
Three v3 onion addresses currently serving the production market, signed under PGP fingerprint 0x7F2A0A9D. Use the Copy buttons.