You’re Invited: State of the Onion 2020
Al Smith
November 10, 2020
Every year people from the Tor Project communities present the State of the Onion, a compilation of updates from our different projects, at conferences around the world. We use this opportunity to talk about highlights of the work we’ve accomplished during the year and what we are excited about in the upcoming year.
With COVID-19 pandemic this year, we didn’t have the chance to ‘tour’ our State of the Onion during any face-to-face conferences. So we decided to bring the State of the Onion to you in a special livestream on November 16 from 16:00 – 18:00 UTC.*
We have an awesome, comprehensive program this year, as we want to show off all the work that the Tor Project has been doing as well as highlight the work from people in our community. Isabela Bagueros, our executive director, will host this event and help to provide continuity for everything we’ll discuss.
* Show local time for the day-of the event.
Program
Part I — The Tor Project
Topic | Speaker | Details |
User experience | Antonela Debiasi UX Lead & Designer | Presentation on the user experience improvements we have made in Tor tools during 2020 and what’s coming next in 2021. |
Tor community | Gustavo Gus Community Team Lead | Presentation on the work we’ve been doing to deliver trainings to communities around the world, how we’re adapting this work during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as how we’re building connections with users through the year. |
Tor Browser | Matthew Finkel Tor Browser Team Lead | Presentation on the successful migration of Tor Browser desktop and mobile onto Fenix, the newest version of Firefox. |
Tor network performance | Mike Perry Scalability and Network Performance Lead | Presentation on our efforts to improve performance on the Tor network. |
Network simulation | Jim Newsome Shadow Developer | Presentation on work to improve Shadow, the Tor network simulator used to conduct experiments with potential improvements before making these changes on the live network. |
Core tor | Nick Mathewson Core Tor CTO | Presentation on our efforts to move into an implementation in Rust. |
Censorship circumvention | Cecylia & Philipp Winter Anti-Censorship Team | Presentation on how we have improved Tor as a censorship circumvention tool in 2020 and a preview of what’s coming next. |
Onion services | George Kadianakis & David Goulet Network Team Developers | Presentation on onion services improvements we’ve accomplished in 2020. |
Tokens | George Kadianakis Network Team Developer | Presentation on research to implement tokens to improve Tor usability and the results of our work over the last year. |
Integration | Alex Færøy Network Team Lead | Presentation on work to help third-party developers to integrate tor into their applications and the work we’re doing to improve these integrations. |
Part II — Tor Community
We have also invited other projects who are part of the Tor community to present and share their updates.
Kushal Das SecureDrop Developer | Presentation on recent SecureDrop improvements and the collaboration with Tor to create proof-of-concept human-memorable names for SecureDrop onion services addresses. | |
Alison Macrina Leads the Library Freedom Project | Presentation on LFP’s work to bring privacy to the librarians, libraries, and their communities. | |
Richard Pospesel Ricochet Developer | Presentation on work to revamp Ricochet and the use of v3 onion services. | |
Maria Xynou OONI’s Partnership Program – Manager | Presentation on the status of Internet censorship around the world and OONI’s work to measure it. | |
Nathan Freitas Founder of the Guardian Project | Presentation on the Guardian Project’s work to integrate Tor and Snowflake into their applications. | |
Micah Flee OnionShare Developer | Presentation on new features coming up for OnionShare. |
The State of the Onion will be streamed on the Tor Project’s YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter accounts.
You can ask questions or join the conversation in two ways: use the Twitter hashtag #StateOfTheOnion2020 or by using the live chat feature on the YouTube stream.
This event is part of our year-end fundraising campaign. You can support the Tor Project’s work to resist the surveillance pandemic by making a donation today. Your donation will be matched, 1:1, by Friends of Tor. We couldn’t do the work we’re sharing at this year’s State of the Onion without your support!
