Next Bitcoin Update Will Support Tor V3 Addresses
The next version of Bitcoin Core will support Tor Network's latest V3 addresses - which will become entirely the new standard next year.
Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) 155, which contains details of Tor support, has been incorporated into the current Bitcoin reference implementation. It will be available in Bitcoin Core version 0.21.
Bitcoin Core v0.21 will support Tor V3 addresses, and BIP155 (which supports gossiping them over the network).
— Pieter Wuille (@pwuille) October 11, 2020
Tor V2 addresses are deprecated since last month, and will be disabled in Oct 2021: https://t.co/GQjTN94L4j https://t.co/QimLo4tSJx
The Tor Network is based on open source software and allows anonymous communication over the Internet. In July, its developers announced that the network's V2 addresses - which have been in use for more than a decade - will be "retired" on October 15, 2021. They will be replaced by the new V3 addresses that have been in development since 2015.
“As humanity's understanding of mathematics and cryptography evolved, the base of version 2 became fragile and, at this point, insecure,” said the announcement, adding that “[In 2015], a large-scale development effort over 3 years resulted in version 3. ”
Version 3 addresses add some significant improvements compared to current addresses. They use a stronger form of encryption, leak less information to anyone who monitors the network, and increase security.
