Snowflake
P2P InfrastructureA pluggable transport for the Tor network that uses ephemeral volunteer browser proxies to help censored users circumvent internet blocks. Volunteers run lightweight WebRTC proxies (via browser extension, webpage tab, or standalone binary) that relay traffic to a Tor bridge, disguising the connection as ordinary WebRTC video/voice traffic.
Fully P2P Community Low capture risk
Links
Details
License BSD-3-Clause / BSD
Dev Status Released
Owner Tor Project, Inc. / Originally created by Serene (hacker / former Google engineer)
Country USA
Start Year 2016
Stack Go, JavaScript, WebRTC
Funding Community
Last Investigated Mar 10, 2026
P2P Infrastructure Attributes
P2P Architecture Ephemeral WebRTC peer-to-peer proxy mesh; domain fronting for broker signaling
Overlay Network Global broker-mediated (clients matched to available proxies via centralized broker using domain fronting; traffic flows P2P)
Content Addressing No
Local-First N/A (routing infrastructure, not storage)
E2EE Yes — traffic encrypted by Tor's onion encryption layers; WebRTC DTLS for transport
Byzantine Fault Tolerance No
Signature TLS (DTLS for WebRTC transport); Tor circuit encryption layers
Permissions N/A (open relay; no access control — any censored user matched by broker)
Infrastructure Function Censorship circumvention; Relay / proxy
Threat Model State-level censorship; DPI (Deep Packet Inspection); ISP-level blocking; IP enumeration blocking
Volunteer / Node Model Volunteer-operated (browser extension or tab); Embedded (runs on user device while browser is open)
Traffic Visibility No content (encrypted payload only); Partial metadata — proxy sees client IP and Tor bridge destination but not content or final destination
Active Deployment Scale ~140,000 unique proxy IP addresses concurrently (2024); ~35,000 daily users connecting via Snowflake; ~29 TB daily traffic relayed