Running your Node over Tor

Tor is a network that helps anonymize your internet traffic by routing it through a series of volunteer-operated servers (relays). This guide explains how to configure your Ergo node to route its P2P network traffic through Tor.

If you have Tor installed and running (typically listening on 127.0.0.1:9050 for SOCKS proxy connections), you first need to ensure your node's P2P and API interfaces are bound to localhost in your ergo.conf file:

scorex.network.bindAddress = "127.0.0.1:9030"
scorex.restApi.bindAddress = "127.0.0.1:9053"

With Tor installed and running, and the configuration above set, some older guides launch the Ergo node using Java system properties (-D) to direct outgoing network traffic through the Tor SOCKS proxy:

java -DsocksProxyHost=localhost -DsocksProxyPort=9050 -Xmx4G -jar ergo-*.jar --mainnet -c ergo.conf 

Do not treat those JVM SOCKS flags as a complete privacy guarantee. A May 2026 node manual update warned that Akka / JDK NIO P2P paths can bypass DsocksProxyHost, so gossip may still leave over the normal network unless the whole process is isolated by OS-level routing, a container/network namespace, or another tested Tor-only setup.

Example Configuration File

ergo {
    node {
        mining = false

        utxo {
           utxoBootstrap = true
           storingUtxoSnapshots = 0
        }
        nipopow {
           nipopowBootstrap = true
           p2pNipopows = 2
        }
    }

}

scorex {
    restApi {
        apiKeyHash = "324dcf027dd4a30a932c441f365a25e86b173defa4b8e58948253471b81b72cf"
        bindAddress = "127.0.0.1:9053"
    }
    network {
        bindAddress = "127.0.0.1:9030"
        # Use this if you want to bind it to a public address
        #declaredAddress = ""
    }
}