what is proxy chaining?
routing traffic through two or more proxies in sequence so that no single hop knows both who you are and where you went.
your client connects to proxy a, tells it to connect to proxy b, and b makes the request to the target. a sees you but not the destination. b sees the destination but thinks a is the client. tor generalises this to three relays chosen per circuit. people chain to compartmentalise trust, to reach a network only the second hop can see, or to put a stable exit behind a rotating entry. the costs add up quickly: latency stacks at every hop, throughput drops to the slowest link, failures become hard to attribute, and each extra operator is one more party who could log something. wiring is done with tools like proxychains, a local socks5 relay, or a client library that supports an upstream proxy. most buyers never need it. one good exit plus consistent client behaviour beats three mediocre hops for almost every real task.