Question: why isn't tor using fully human readable address

[thiswillbeyourgithub]

Hi,

I hope you won't mind me asking this question but I couldn't find any info about it online.

Basically memorizing long onion address is inhumane so people rely on vanity address + copy pasting it somewhere, both being security issues but understandable practical compromise.

So why not using things like bitcoin's BIP39 (example link) to turn those long random strings into human readable forms? Anyone can memorize a list of 50 words with enough time and technique.

Is it because of a loss of entropy? Would the list of words be too long like 500 words? I'd be surprised given it's heavily used in cryptocurrencies and nobody's stealing money by guessing seeds.

I'm sure the people behind the tor project have thought about this already and are super smart but I was interested in the reasons :)

Have a nice day!

[VA1DER]

With a password manager and/or bookmarks (which you can edit the title of), the long .onion addresses are not an issue. The whole point of Onion addresses is to divorce them from bias because, after all, anonymity is the top goal. Which is why this whole project is a very Bad Idea™.

1. Vanity addresses reduce the entropy in your address making the crypto easier to crack
2. Vanity addresses draws attention to an address, making it easier to target
3. Vanity addresses are much easier to socially engineer. If you know that the address you want has a familiar word, and someone then produces a copycat with that same word, you're less likely to notice the fake address because the rest of the address isn't what you're looking at.

BIP39 isn't a terrible idea for .onion, but you already have people who misuse .onion address generation in this way to insert words into it. Think of the abuse that BIP39 would get by people wanting cool phrases. Also, it's easier, not harder, to get it wrong by swapping words, etc. The only safe way to use BIP39 is to have it in a password manager. If you're going to do that, then you might as well keep the original address there.