Running Bisq in China

The Great Firewall of China (GFW) makes it difficult to run Bisq from within mainland China.

This article outlines a workaround.

Requirements

You will need a working solution to access the internet already available to you, for example a VPN or a local proxy, and know its IP and port number; Bisq will be made to use that proxy to reach the Tor entry nodes.

Alternatively to the following, also look into the SSTap software bundle, which users report to have successfully implemented to connect to Bisq.

Steps for Bisq1

You will edit the torrc default settings that Bisq uses to connect to Tor, and to this extent you will modify a file inside the main jar file of the application, desktop-version-number-all.jar Depending on your operating system, this is where it should be locatedː

• Windowsː Cː\Users\<yourusername>\AppData\Local\Bisq\app\
• Linuxː /opt/bisq/lib/app/
• MacOSː $Home/Applications/Bisq.app/Contents/app/

A jar file is actually a zipped archive, that you can open with 7zip (a mac user reported WinZip working as well); inside the root of this archive, there is a file named torrc that you have to open in a text editor; its contents will be likeː

ControlPort auto
CookieAuthentication 1
DisableNetwork 1
AvoidDiskWrites 1
RunAsDaemon 1
SOCKSPort auto

Addː

Socks5Proxy YourProxyIP:port

on a new line, then save the file and make sure your archiving application updates the archive, then start Bisq.

Steps for Bisq2

As above, pending the existence of a working solution to access the internet, this is how you can set a custom SOCKS5 proxy.

Edit the bisq.conf file in the root of the Bisq2 data directory (same path as Bisq1 data directory, but ending with "2") adding what follows:

application {
  network {
    configByTransportType.tor {
      torrcOverrides {
        Socks5Proxy="ProxyIP:port"
      }
   }
}