The whole run on one page

A first session is not nine equal blocks. Two of the nine take almost no time and two of them can eat the rest of an evening. Laying them out at the same size on one page would be a lie of presentation, so each entry below says what the phase is actually worth in minutes.

Minute 0, before you open anything

The phase with no screen in it. What machine you are on, what network it is using, what you have decided you are actually here to do, and what your stopping rule is. Skipping it does not cost you anything at minute 0. It costs you at minute 75, when you are about to type something into a field and you have no settled view about what belongs there.

People stall here by not treating it as a phase at all. Two to ten minutes, and the ten minute version is the one that saves time later. The three pages in minute 0 cover the room and the machine, the decision you make before anything else, and the choice of hour.

Minute 5, a browser and a set of addresses

Getting a browser that can open an onion address at all, and getting hold of a set of addresses that is worth having. The browser part is a download and a wait. The addresses part is where the noise lives, and it is worse for Crown than for most, because the word crown is an ordinary English word and search results for it are full of things that have nothing to do with any market.

People stall on the address side, not the browser side. Five to twenty minutes depending entirely on how long you spend deciding which list to trust. Four pages sit here, including one on why searching for this particular name is unusually noisy.

Minute 15, arriving and checking where you are

You paste an address, something loads, and the first screen is very often not a market. It is a queue, or a wall with a puzzle on it, or a page that just sits there. The work in this phase is telling those apart and confirming that the thing on screen matches the address you meant to open.

This is the first phase with real stall potential, because a page that looks wrong produces the same reaction every time, which is to go back to a search box and find another address. Two to twenty five minutes. The four pages here cover the queue and the wall, reading the address bar properly, what a first screen cannot tell you, and what to do when nothing loads at all.

Minute 25, the account

A short form. A name that is not a name you use elsewhere, a password you are not going to remember, and whatever else the form asks. It takes three minutes and produces consequences that last the whole life of the account.

The stall here is not difficulty, it is second guessing. People sit on the name field for far longer than the field deserves. Three to fifteen minutes. Four pages cover the name, the password, what each field is doing there, and the second factor.

Minute 35, the recovery material

The phase people skip, and the one that decides whether a bad day later is an annoyance or the end of the account. A phrase or a code appears, once, and what you do in the next sixty seconds is the whole phase.

The stall is a decision about where to put it, made under time pressure, with a screen open that you do not want to leave open. Two to fifteen minutes. Three pages cover the phrase and where it goes, encryption keys in a first session, and testing recovery before you need it.

Minute 45, funding

The longest phase and the one no writing prepares people for. You obtain a coin somewhere else, you send it, and then you wait for a network you do not control to agree that it happened. The active part is a few minutes. The waiting part is not yours to shorten.

The stall is almost always the same. A transfer has been sent, nothing is showing, and the reader cannot tell whether that is normal or whether the money is gone. Ten minutes of work and anything from twenty minutes to a full day of waiting. Four pages cover the wait, the choice of coin, the first transfer, and a deposit that has not appeared.

Minute 60, finding and reading a listing

Search here does not behave like a search engine. It is closer to a catalogue with a filter, it rewards short plain queries, and it punishes the long conversational sort that people have learned to type everywhere else. Then there is the reading, which is a skill of its own.

The stall is time, not confusion. This phase quietly absorbs twenty minutes because browsing is more comfortable than deciding. Ten to forty minutes. Four pages cover the search box, reading a listing, reading a seller, and the listing you should not make your first one.

Minute 75, placing the order

The short irreversible phase. A form, an address field, an encryption step for what you type into it, and a checkout that moves a balance. Five minutes of clicking, and the only five minutes of the session that cannot be undone by closing the tab.

The stall is the encryption step, which is the one part of the session that asks you to use a second tool while a clock is showing. Five to twenty minutes. Four pages cover the address field, encrypting what you type, checkout and escrow, and what changes the second you confirm.

Minute 90, what you now have to watch

The session is over and a thing you cannot see has started. This phase is about which parts of that need attention, which parts do not, and how long each clock runs. It also has the one action left that people get wrong, which is releasing the money too early.

The stall is checking obsessively for two days and then not checking at all on the day that mattered. Five minutes now and a small amount of attention across the following week. Four pages cover the first day, messages, finalising, and the week after.

The two pages that sit outside the clock