[tor-dev] How do Ed25519 relay IDs look like?

Damian Johnson atagar at torproject.org
Sun Aug 2 03:08:48 UTC 2020


> Isn't using "fingerprint" not a bit misleading since it is not the output of
> a hash function but the ed25519 master public key itself?

Hi nusenu, that's fair. We've begun to conflate a couple concepts here...

* Relay operators, controllers, DirPorts, etc all require a canonical
relay identifier. They don't care how it's derived as long as it's
unique to the relay.

* Relays publish a public ed25519 key. This is an implementation
detail that isn't of interest to the above populations.

I'd advise against attempting to rename "fingerprint". That hasn't
gone well for hidden services [1]. But with that aside, relay
identifiers and the representation of ed25519 public keys don't
necessarily need to be one and the same.

[1] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/25918


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