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Timeline

About

This document is an incomplete summary of the main milestones in the history of Onion Services.

For a historical overview, check The Once and Future Onion article.

The technology

Year Technology or relevant event
1996 The Eternity Service and Reply Onions designs
2003 Hidden Service draft spec (rendezvous)
2004 Hidden Service initial implementation on tor 0.0.6pre1 - 2004-04-08
2005 New Hidden Service descriptor format on tor 0.1.1.2-alpha - 2005-07-15
2007 Hidden Service v2 implementation on tor 0.2.0.7-alpha - 2007-09-21
2013 Proposal 224 (Next Generation of Onion Services)
2014 HTTPS certificates (facebook)
2014 Vanity addresses (facebook)
2015 CA/B Forum Ballot 144: validation rules for .onion names
2015 .onion addresses reserved by the IETF (RFC 7686)
2016 Onion Services v3 initial development on tor 0.3.0.1-alpha - 2016-12-19
2016 Proposal 279 (A Name System API for Tor Onion Services)
2017 CA/B Forum Ballots 198 and 201: .onion revisions
2017 Onion Services v3 spec
2018 Onion Services v3 release on tor 0.3.2.9 - 2018-01-09
2018 Alt-Svc (cloudflare)
2020 Onion-Location (TBB 9.5)
2020 Onion Authentication (TBB 9.5)
2020 Onion Names for SecureDrop (TBB 9.5)
2020 CA/B Forum Ballot SC27v3: version 3 Onion Certificates
2020 #MoreOnionsPorfavor
2021 Dreaming at Dusk: NFT Auction
2021 Onion Services v2 final deprecation (v2 deprecation timeline)
2022 CA/B Forum Ballot SC54: Onion Cleanup
2022 DoS and the Onion Services Resource Coalition
2023 ACME for Onions Internet Draft
2023 Proposal 327 (Proof-of-Work) merged (#40634)
2023 Onion Services 20th Anniversary (counting from the draft spec)
2024 Onion Services 20th Anniversary (counting from the initial implementation)
2024 Initial Onion Services implementation in Arti

Applications

Year Application
2010 GlobaLeaks
2010 Ricochet
2013 SecureDrop
2014 Onionshare
2015 Onionbalance
2017 Briar
2019 Wahay
2021 Ricochet-Refresh (first stable release with Onion Services v3 support)
2021 Gosling
2022 Quiet