---
author: dax
date: 2019-05-04 00:00:00+00:00
slug: torv3
title: freenode Next Gen Tor Hidden Service
category: freenode
category: announcements
---

Over the last few years, the Tor Project has developed a [new Tor Hidden
Services protocol](https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/NextGenOnions).
It has a few improvements over the previous version, including better
cryptography using SHA3 and ed25519.

We've added a new Tor Hidden Service address to [our instructions for connecting
to freenode via Tor](https://freenode.net/kb/answer/chat#accessing-freenode-via-tor)
that uses the new protocol. The new address is

    ajnvpgl6prmkb7yktvue6im5wiedlz2w32uhcwaamdiecdrfpwwgnlqd.onion

If you're using a recent version of Tor (0.3.5 or newer) to connect to
freenode, you should be able to use the new service by changing from the old
address to the new one in your client configuration. The old address will
continue to work for the forseeable future, but is likely to be deprecated
eventually as the Tor ecosystem changes.
