Why Tor using 4 nodes when i open .onion

[goodpeople]

Hello . why in the latest version Whonix on Virtualbox Tor using 4 nodes when i open .onion sites? in the past Tor used 3 nodes when i open .onion sites.
Best Regards

[Patrick]

From changelog:

@Patrick

Highlights

• Add vanguards , which protects against guard discovery and related traffic analysis attacks and fixes CVE-2020-8516 Hidden Service deanonymization .

@Patrick

Notable Changes

• Add vanguards - protects against guard discovery and related traffic analysis attacks.
  • CVE-2020-8516 Hidden Service deanonymization

    • The daemon in Tor through 0.4.1.8 and 0.4.2.x through 0.4.2.6 does not verify that a rendezvous node is known before attempting to connect to it, which might make it easier for remote attackers to discover circuit information.

    • vanguards fixes this

  • use vanguards from packages.debian.org
  • enable vanguards by default , install by default
  • added vanguards documentation
  • vanguards - Additional protections for Tor Onion Services

[goodpeople]

thank you for answer