Relay Families are Tor’s way of grouping together relays run by the same operator,
providing security and operational transparency.
But the current 20-year-old design bloats directory info
and becomes a maintenance headache as families grow.
Tor 0.4.9 (currently in alpha) introduces cryptographic family certificates
to help save up to 50% of the bandwidth cost for
initial connections to the Tor network.
Here's how it works, and what you can do to speed up the transition.