About — August 2026

About TorBible

TorBible is an independent Hidden Wiki alternative and Tor encyclopedia: a market catalog and maintained onion-link directory on one side; guides, glossary entries, and citable research on the other. It is editorially maintained, has no ads, and works without JavaScript. TorBible does not sell goods, hold escrow, or operate any listed service.

Mission

TorBible exists so people can read a staff-written index of Tor instead of a vandalized wiki. Search engines do not crawl most .onion services. Directories remain how readers find mail, press tips, and — separately — a market catalog. That is the Hidden Wiki pattern. We keep the pattern and drop the graffiti.

Two layers are first-class and are not the same thing. The market catalog, onion service directory, and forum directory are maintained records. The encyclopedia contains Tor explainers, security and privacy guides, a glossary, tool profiles, and research. We do not call the catalog an encyclopedia, and we do not scrape another directory’s shop-onion table into ours.

Other independent directories exist in the same niche, including TorWiki. We may cite their clearnet pages as public sources. We do not import their mirrors, their editor bio, or their operational how-tos.

Who writes this

Feature articles are signed TorBible Editorial — the same desk named on Learn, Guides, and Research. That is a staff byline, not a public editor-in-chief profile. The legal notice still has no publishable personal or company imprint; we do not invent a named journalist to fill the gap.

The desk’s working rules are short: accuracy over speed, verification over assumption, and encyclopedia over a deal walkthrough. Corrections go into the affected page with a review date. Details: editorial policy.

Principles

Privacy-first: no tracking, no analytics cookies, no accounts, readable without JavaScript.
Editorial control: no user-submitted listings and no scraped competitor catalogs.
No ads: no commercial advertising and no affiliate deals on illegal offers.
Honesty about gaps: if we have no market onion on file, the Official slot stays empty. We do not invent the string.
Independence: no affiliation with markets, vendors, or law enforcement.
Citable sources: market profiles and research pages link clearnet reporting. Encyclopedia articles name primary material where we have it.

Public record we document

The encyclopedia sits on public, checkable facts — not on a private onion feed. Onion routing was described at the US Naval Research Lab in the 1990s; the Tor prototype was public in 2002; the Tor Project incorporated as a US 501(c)(3) in 2006. Network measurements are published at Tor Metrics. That history is in our Tor network history and What is Tor? pages.

A Hidden Wiki is a curated index of .onion sites. Conventional crawlers skip most hidden services, so directories remain how people find mail, search, and press tips. The original community wiki was editable by anyone and filled with phishing clones. Our explainer: What is the Hidden Wiki.

Public shutdowns are part of the same record. Silk Road was seized in 2013, AlphaBay in 2017, Hydra in 2022, Incognito in 2024. On 16 June 2025, Eurojust and Reuters reported an international action against Archetyp Market (infrastructure taken offline; administrator arrested in Spain). Our takedown timeline and the Archetyp profile cite those notices. The catalog card for Archetyp is now listed as Seized — a historical row, matching those press releases.

Abacus is listed as an exit scam after it went dark in July 2025 with no seizure banner of the Archetyp type. Incognito is listed as seized. Those three — Archetyp, Abacus, and Incognito — are the historical rows in this edition.

This 2026 edition

We do not publish a founding myth or an “edition IV” number. What is on the site now:

August 2026 catalog: 9 names tagged Active (Torzon through Omega), plus 3 historical rows (Archetyp, Abacus, Incognito).
Market onions: 5 of 9 Active names have an Official onion on file; the rest keep an empty Official slot. Historical names have no onion row. We do not invent missing strings.
Service directory: 41 clearnet and onion entries across 6 categories; 17 .onion strings already in our JSON (mail, press, selected forums — not a scraped shop list).
Encyclopedia: 15 guides, 11 Learn articles, 10 research pieces, 65 glossary terms, 3 tool profiles.
Our own onion: TorBible has no published onion mirror or PGP key, and the footer no longer promises one. We do not mint a fake address to look finished.

Editorial process

Every listing and explainer is supposed to survive this checklist:

Own files first: markets, forums, and services come from our JSON, not from scraping another catalog.
Primary sources: takedowns, dates, and scale claims need a named clearnet notice (agency, wire service, or a directory we already cite). We label directory gossip as reported.
No invented shop onions: a missing market address stays missing. Service onions are only strings already stored.
No deal instructions: no buyer’s bible, no mixer rankings, no no-KYC “how to buy XMR,” no shop-mirror dumps.
Dated reviews: encyclopedia articles carry publication and review dates. Corrections change the text; they do not silently backdate it.

Verification methodology

We do not claim a weekly live crawl of market mirrors. What we do instead:

A market card prints an .onion only when that string is already in our catalog file. Empty Official slots stay empty. Readers who use a third-party address should check a PGP canary and a second independent source.
Service and forum onions in the directory are strings already in our files (including two 55-character addresses we will not “fix” without an official source).
Phishing is treated as a subject — see phishing detection — not as a reason to paste a competing wiki’s table.
Status tags (Active, Exit scam, Seized) are editorial. They are not a warranty of uptime.

Content library

Counts are generated from the same files the site builds:

9 active market listings with tags (2FA, PGP, escrow, coins) and 3 historical names. Shop onions appear only when already on file (5 of 9 Active names today).
15 security and privacy guides, including Tor Browser setup, OPSEC, phishing, security levels, verified onion links, PGP, Tails, Tor on mobile, escrow language, and coin visibility.
11 Learn articles (Hidden Wiki, onion routing, bridges, legality of Tor, and related explainers).
10 research and history articles (takedown timeline, Tor history, Dream, Empire, White House Market, Silk Road).
A 65-term glossary (definitions, including mixer as a concept — not a how-to).
3 tool profiles and the link directory (41 entries, 17 stored onions).

What we are not

TorBible is not a marketplace, escrow, mixer, or wallet. We do not process transactions, host hidden services, or sell access. We are not a clone of another directory’s copy or onion list. We are not a law-enforcement notice board. Read the Hidden Wiki directory explainer, market escrow systems, or the market takedown timeline.

Contact and corrections

There is no public social handle and no twitter:site tag — we do not invent one. Source rules and how we correct pages live in the editorial policy. Publisher contact for a live launch belongs on Legal once an imprint exists. Privacy notes: Privacy.

Open sources cited on this page

Tor Project — official site, Browser downloads, and project history.
Tor Metrics — public network measurements.
Eurojust — Archetyp action (16 June 2025).
Reuters — Archetyp announcement.
TorWiki — About (peer directory; cited, not copied).