Chapter I. Accessing TorZon
Tor Browser setup, mirror selection, first login
Reaching TorZon Market takes Tor Browser, one onion address from the mirror list, and roughly two minutes. This chapter walks through the setup once, then covers the small handful of things that trip up new readers on the first login.
§1. Tor Browser
Download Tor Browser from torproject.org. That is the only source you should trust the first time. Every other download page is either a mirror you cannot verify or a fake distribution with modifications baked in. First install, verify the signature on the bundle. The Tor Project download page walks through the check on every operating system.
Security settings
Open the shield icon next to the address bar. Set the security level to Safest. This disables JavaScript on all sites. Some pages break under Safest. Every serious Tor storefront including TorZon works fine on Safest because the login flow is HTML forms, not React apps.
Do not resize the window
Tor Browser opens at a fixed size on purpose. Resizing gives you a unique window size that fingerprints uniquely across sites. If you maximize by accident, close the window and open a fresh one.
Do not install any extension
Every extension changes the fingerprint. NoScript, uBlock Origin, a dark theme, all of them make you look different from a stock install. Even changing the new tab page is a mistake. Leave the browser exactly as it came out of the download.
§2. Picking a mirror
Any of the six addresses on the mirror list works. They all resolve to the same storefront. If one stalls on the anti-DDoS queue for more than two minutes, try the next. Tor circuits vary across an evening, so a slow first attempt does not predict the second.
§3. First login
Paste the onion into the address bar and press return. The anti-DDoS wait page appears and holds you for 20 to 60 seconds while a counter decrements. When the counter finishes, the captcha renders.
The captcha carries a check inside it
The captcha image on TorZon has the current onion address printed in the small text at the bottom. Read that string. Compare it to what you typed into the address bar. Match wins. Mismatch means you landed on a phishing clone, close the tab and open the mirror list again from a bookmark.
§4. Registration
New account registration is a single form: username, password, mnemonic seed. Write the mnemonic on a piece of paper. Do not screenshot it. Do not save it to a cloud-synced note. The mnemonic is the recovery path if you lose the password. Anyone with the mnemonic owns the account.
§5. Depositing coin
The wallet panel shows deposit addresses per coin. Monero is the default and the recommended coin. Bitcoin and Litecoin also work. Do not deposit from a KYC exchange address directly. Route through a wallet you control first, or better, buy Monero peer-to-peer.
§6. Common problems
- Wait page never decrements, bad circuit. Close the tab, open another mirror, or use New Identity from the browser menu and try again.
- Captcha never renders, same fix as above.
- Address bar shows a different string than the captcha, phishing clone. Close and open a mirror from your bookmark or from this list.
- Everything is slow, Tor network congestion. Check
metrics.torproject.orgif you want to confirm. Wait an hour.