Setting aside the issue related with usability there are also some interesting improvements that can be made to make Tor HS more performant. I will summarize here the ideas that have been brought forward along with some that are not detailed anywhere and would like to see more interest in. I would suggest to start collecting all the information regarded to Tor HS improvements on this wiki page: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/roadmaps/Tor/HiddenService.... With respect to what is already on that page I got some feedback from rransom on those two items on IRC, but I did not note them down. It would be good if you were to summarize the critiques here or on the wiki page. Also there are a set of proposals that are related to Tor HS improvements that have been abandoned for some time and I believe it would be useful to summarize them inside of that wiki page. The proposals are: #121 Filename: 121-hidden-service-authentication.txt Title: Hidden Service Authentication https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/blob/HEAD:/proposals/121-hidden-se... #142 Filename: 142-combine-intro-and-rend-points.txt Title: Combine Introduction and Rendezvous Points https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/blob/HEAD:/proposals/142-combine-i... #143 Filename: 143-distributed-storage-improvements.txt Title: Improvements of Distributed Storage for Tor Hidden Service Descriptors https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/blob/HEAD:/proposals/143-distribut... #155 Filename: 155-four-hidden-service-improvements.txt Title: Four Improvements of Hidden Service Performance https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/blob/HEAD:/proposals/155-four-hidd... #194 Filename: 194-mnemonic-urls.txt Title: Mnemonic .onion URLs https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/blob/HEAD:/proposals/194-mnemonic-... and also this inside of the ideas, that is loosely related to #194, but instead of offering an encoding it offers a petname system: Filename: xxx-onion-nyms.txt Title: .onion nym system https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/blob/HEAD:/proposals/ideas/xxx-oni... The single most important thing I believe is needed in Tor Hidden Service is Encrypted services. These can be seen, in a way, as the reverse of Tor2web mode. It allows people to publish Hidden Services with no anonymity, but have the Tor end-to-end encryption and performance improvements. I see these to be the future of what was previously done, poorly, with Tor Exit Enclaves. One that wishes to have an end-to-end encrypted tunnel from Tor clients can run an encrypted service and have a reduced number of hops from the IP and RP. Roger started writing up a spec on this and it can be found here: Filename: xxx-encrypted-services.txt Title: Encrypted services as a replacement to exit enclaving https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/blob/HEAD:/proposals/ideas/xxx-enc... - Art.