Tor Relay Nodes

P2P Infrastructure

Volunteer-operated network nodes implementing the Tor onion routing protocol, providing anonymous multi-hop routing for internet traffic through guard (entry), middle, and exit relay roles. Each relay peels one layer of encryption, ensuring no single node knows both the origin and destination of traffic.

Fully P2P Community Low capture risk

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Details

License BSD-3-Clause / BSD

Dev Status Released

Owner The Tor Project, Inc. (nonprofit) / Volunteer operators worldwide

Country USA

Start Year 2002

Stack C, Python

Funding Community, Donations

Last Investigated Mar 10, 2026

Use Case Domains

Platform Evolution & Sovereignty

Affordances

Self-hostable

P2P Infrastructure Attributes

P2P Architecture Onion routing (layered encryption, 3-hop circuit: guard → middle → exit)

Overlay Network Global (public relay directory maintained by directory authorities; bridges unlisted)

Content Addressing No (location-based routing, not content-addressed)

Local-First N/A (routing infrastructure; data passes through, not stored)

E2EE Yes — multi-layer onion encryption (each hop decrypts one layer; E2EE between client and exit for HTTPS traffic depends on application)

Byzantine Fault Tolerance No (probabilistic, not BFT; network trusts directory authority consensus)

Signature RSA-1024 (legacy) / Ed25519 (modern) — relay identity keys; TLS for transport

Permissions Exit policies (each relay operator configures exit policy rules); directory authority flags (Guard, Exit, Fast, Stable)

Infrastructure Function Anonymous routing; Censorship circumvention

Threat Model State-level censorship; Mass surveillance; Traffic analysis; DPI (Deep Packet Inspection); ISP-level blocking

Volunteer / Node Model Volunteer-operated (self-funded by operators); Hybrid (volunteer + foundation-operated bridges and some exit relays)

Traffic Visibility No content (encrypted payload only); No metadata between hops (each relay knows only previous and next hop, not origin and destination simultaneously)

Active Deployment Scale ~8,000 active relay nodes (July 2025); ~2,000 bridge relays; ~2.5M daily users; majority of traffic from Russia, Iran, USA