MIRROR REGISTRY // ROLES + STATUS
Mars Mirror List: Verified Onions and How to Read Them
This page explains the Mars mirror set: what each role means, how a probe status is scored, and where the copy-paste addresses live. The primary onion sits below in full. The rest of the signed registry stays on the console, so there is one place to verify against. For a term-by-term glossary of status labels see mars-market.icu's mirror list; for how mirrors interact with I2P fallback and clone-spotting see mars-darknet.com's mirror page.
How a mirror moves from listed to dead
A row is not static. It starts as an entry in the signed directory, gets probed on a schedule, and lands in one of two end states. Reading that path is the difference between a link you can test and a link you should skip.
The addresses at a glance
Every role below is shown as a full, copy-paste-ready onion string — the primary, both failovers, the mirror, and the retired legacy entry. Nothing on this page is truncated. Copy directly from here, then confirm the PGP signature on the verify page before you connect to anything.
An address that is not in the signed set is a clone until the key says otherwise. Verify on the PGP verify page or cross-check against the home console table.
What each role means
The label next to a Mars address is not decoration. It tells you when to reach for that entry and when to leave it alone.
Primary is the first Mars address to try. It carries the current canonical Mars service. Failover entries are the same Mars market on backup addresses, useful when the primary is slow, rate-limited, or briefly down. A Mirror serves the same Mars content on a separate address to spread load. Legacy is retired. It is kept on the list only so that a burned address is easy to recognise and reject, never to be opened again.
Roles can shift as addresses rotate. The role shown is the last recorded state, so re-check against the signed table if a session matters.
How to read each pill
The pill is a compact probe reading, not a verdict. Three states cover the whole list, and each one means something narrow.
Checking means the last probe reached the address, but you still owe it a signature check. Treat it as unconfirmed. Dead means the probe got no usable answer. A dead entry stays listed only as a warning, so nobody chases a burned address. There is no hard-coded green light here. An entry turns green only when a real probe backs it, which is why most sit at Checking most of the time.
Staleness is the quiet risk. The list reflects the last pass, not this second. If an entry matters, re-check the signature yourself before you connect.
How a fake mirror list dresses itself up
A cloned list rarely looks broken. It looks tidy, and that is the whole trick. A few patterns turn up again and again once you know to look for them.
The first is padding. A fake stacks on extra rows so the page feels more authoritative than the signed set, betting that one poisoned address gets copied in the noise. The second is the mixed list, where a real primary sits at the top to earn a glance while the failovers under it point somewhere else. The third is the scrubbed list, which quietly drops the retired legacy row, because a page with no warning on it reads as clean and moves you along faster.
Reading against those tricks is easy once you expect them. Count the roles and hold them against the signed table on the console. There is one primary, not three. Be wary of a list longer than the canon, since more rows is not more safety. Treat a set with no dead entry as a quiet red flag of its own, because any registry that has run for a while collects burned addresses. When a list and the signed table disagree by even a single row, believe the table.
How the mirror list is built and kept honest
A mirror list is only useful if the process that fills it is boring and repeatable. Here is what actually happens between "someone finds an address" and "it appears on this page."
Where a candidate address comes from
A new address enters the candidate pool from one of two sources: it is generated as an official failover ahead of time, or it surfaces from the market's own operators as a replacement for a mirror that is being retired. Addresses sourced from forum posts or unsolicited messages are never added directly — they get the same verification pass as everything else, which usually means they fail it.
Verification before listing
Before an address earns a role in the table, it has to resolve over Tor and actually serve the market rather than a parking page or an unrelated site, then match the signed canon once the entry is added to the record the PGP key covers. Only after both checks pass does an address move from candidate to listed.
Ongoing checks, not a one-time pass
Listing is not the end of the process. Every address on this page continues through the same probe cycle documented on the status page, which is why the pill next to each entry can change without the address itself changing.
What each role and status word means
Primary
The Mars address meant to be tried first. It is the one shown in the copy-and-verify box on the home console and the one the URL validator names as the reference Mars match.
Failover
A Mars address held in reserve specifically for when the primary does not answer. Failover entries go through the identical verification pass as the primary Mars address; the only difference is priority order, not trust level.
Mirror
An additional working address outside the primary/failover priority chain — still verified, still live-probed, just not first in line.
Legacy
A retired address kept visible and struck through on purpose, so it stays recognizable as no-longer-valid instead of silently disappearing and confusing anyone who had it bookmarked.
Mirror rotation and cross-checking, in depth
Reading a mirror role correctly is the easy half of the job. The two panels below cover what happens when a mirror rotates out from under you, and how to cross-check a Mars address against more than one source before you trust it.
Mirror rotation history: why the same market keeps changing addresses
An onion address is not tied to a domain registrar or a certificate authority — it is a self-certifying key pair, which means a Mars operator can generate a fresh one at any point without asking anyone's permission. That flexibility cuts both ways. It lets the market rotate away from an address that has been seized, DDoSed, or doxxed in a forum leak, but it also means the Mars mirror list is never a fixed, one-time document. Expect rotation, and treat every mirror list — this one included — as a snapshot rather than a permanent record.
Rotation typically follows one of three triggers. The first is a routine failover promotion: an existing failover mirror gets promoted to primary while the old primary is retired to Legacy, usually announced ahead of time on the market's own vendor and buyer boards. The second is an emergency rotation, triggered by a takedown, a credible compromise report, or unusual load consistent with a targeted denial-of-service attempt — these happen with no warning and the old address moves straight to Legacy or is dropped from the list entirely. The third is routine hygiene: some operators rotate addresses on a fixed schedule regardless of any incident, purely to limit how long any single address stays a fixed target.
Whatever the trigger, the signal that a rotation happened is always the same: the signed canon changes, and the PGP-covered mirror record on this console updates to match. A forum post claiming a "new official Mars link" without a matching update to the signed canon is not a rotation — it is either outdated chatter or a phishing attempt riding on real rotation activity to make a fake address sound routine.
Cross-checking a mirror against more than one source
No single source should be the last word on a Mars address, including this one. The discipline that actually protects you is checking the same address against at least two independent references before you treat it as safe, because a single compromised or cloned source can otherwise feed you a convincing-looking fake with nothing to catch it.
Start with the PGP signature on the verify page — this is the strongest single check available, since forging a signature requires the private key, not just a copy of the page's HTML. Next, compare the address against the raw signed directory file directly rather than trusting only the rendered page, since a compromised page template could theoretically display an address that does not match its own underlying data. Finally, where it is available, weigh independent community confirmation — vendor accounts and long-standing buyers on Mars itself referencing the same address in market-internal messages is a weaker signal than a PGP match, but it is a useful sanity check when a mirror has just rotated and the signed canon has not yet propagated everywhere.
Treat disagreement between sources as a stop condition, not something to average out. If the PGP signature matches but a forum thread insists on a different address, trust the signature. If the signature does not match anything you have, do not open the link no matter how many other sources vouch for it — a compromised community source is exactly how a convincing clone spreads in the first place.
Mirror list questions
Which entries are working onion links?
Any entry whose pill is not dead, once its PGP signature matches. A pill on its own is a probe reading, not a guarantee.
What do the roles Primary, Failover and Legacy mean?
Primary is the address to try first. Failover addresses are backups when the primary is slow or down. Legacy is retired and should never be opened.
Why is only the primary shown in full here?
To keep one canonical copy of the full set. Every complete string lives in the signed table on the console, which is the place to verify before you connect.
How many mirrors does the Mars market actually need?
Enough that one address failing does not strand buyers. A single point of failure is a real risk for any onion-only market, which is why the Mars market maintains a primary plus multiple failovers rather than relying on one address alone.
Should I bookmark a Mars market mirror address?
Bookmark the home console page instead of a specific onion. Individual Mars market mirror addresses can retire; the console page itself is what stays the stable, up-to-date reference across mirror changes.
Why a Mars mirror list needs its own page
Search a Mars mirror and the top results are ad slots, not the Mars market itself — anyone can outbid for the "mars mirror" keyword, and a cloned Mars mirror page is cheap to stand up next to a convincing copy of the real Mars wordmark. That is the whole reason this Mars mirror list exists as a dedicated, signed reference instead of a random forum thread: every Mars address here traces back to the same signed canon the Mars PGP page checks against, not to whoever bought the loudest Mars ad this week. Bookmark this page, not a single Mars onion string, since a Mars mirror can rotate while the page you are reading stays the constant. When in doubt about any Mars link circulating elsewhere, the Mars status page and this registry are the two references that actually stay in sync with the signed Mars canon.
Why the Mars market runs more than one mirror at all
A single onion address is a single point of failure — a seizure, a host outage, or a routing problem anywhere along the Tor path can take it offline with no warning. Running a primary address plus dedicated failover mirrors is the standard defense darknet markets use against that risk, and the Mars market follows the same pattern documented across other Tor-only marketplaces.
Primary versus failover, in practice
The primary Mars market address is what this reference recommends trying first. A failover exists specifically to absorb traffic when the primary does not answer — it is not a lesser or unofficial address, just a lower-priority one in the routing order this console recommends.
What redundancy does not solve
Multiple mirrors protect against one address going dark. They do not protect against a phishing clone using a similar-looking address, which is a completely different threat that only the PGP signature check on the verify page actually addresses. Treat mirror redundancy and address verification as two separate, both-necessary defenses.