Public Access

Public access means making your services reachable by anyone on the Internet, not just your own devices. This is how you host a website, a blog, a public API, or any service you want others to use.

When to Use Public Access

Public access is for services you intentionally want to share with others. For example, hosting a personal website, a Nostr relay, a Lightning node, or a Nextcloud instance for your family. If only you and your own devices need access, use private access instead.

Strategies

• Clearnet — Host services on the public Internet using standard domains (.com, .net, etc.). Requires gateway selection, a domain name, DNS configuration, and port forwarding. Anyone can access your service using a normal browser.

• Tor — Host services as .onion addresses on the Tor network. No domain, DNS, or port forwarding required. Anyone with a Tor-enabled browser can reach your service. Tor hosting is censorship-resistant and can be anonymous if you don’t associate the address with your identity. Requires installing the Tor service from the marketplace.

• Public IP — Expose a service interface directly using a gateway’s IP address and port, without a domain name. Useful for peer-to-peer protocols like Bitcoin P2P and Lightning that communicate using raw addresses. Not suitable for browser-based access, since Let’s Encrypt does not sign certificates for IP addresses.

Tip

Tor is listed under both private and public access because the difference is simply whether you share the .onion address. Keep it secret and it’s a private tunnel to your service. Publish it and it becomes a public endpoint — no configuration change needed.

Combining Strategies

You can host the same service on both clearnet and Tor simultaneously. This is useful when you want a standard domain for everyday access but also want a censorship-resistant fallback that doesn’t depend on DNS or your gateway.