Shallot

Back in 2016 I used Shallot 0.0.3-alpha to generate a vanity version 2 onion address for McRetro.

This is now historical documentation.

Shallot generates the old 16-character v2 onion addresses, and Tor removed support for those services in 2021.

Modern version 3 onion addresses are 56 characters long and require modern v3-compatible vanity tools.

For the old Ubuntu 16.04 setup I was using, Shallot needed the OpenSSL development headers:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install libssl-dev

Then:

./configure && make

Running:

./shallot cat

searched for a v2 address containing cat.

Running:

./shallot ^cat

searched for one beginning with cat.

Again, those examples only apply to the obsolete v2 address format.

The generated private key was the identity of the onion service, so losing control of that key meant losing control of that address.

Never share the private service key.

For a modern onion service, use current Tor v3 documentation and tooling instead.

Sources