this diagram shows that my snowflake proxy connects the user to a bridge.
but what sort of a bridge? i don’t assume that this is already a guard, because i don’t need to install tor for running the snowflake browser extension.
and in addition: is there a difference with regard to the diagram above in running the snowflake browser extensions vs. the standalone proxy?
Currently there are just 2 bridges set up for Snowflake, run by the Tor Project.
And yes, they do act as guards. In fact I think it should even be possible to set up your Tor client to connect to them directly (not through a Snowflake proxy), using as a classic bridge.
What a Snowflake proxy does is it simply passes data between the bridge and the client. A Snowflake proxy itself does not include any Tor core code, and does not implement the Tor protocol or any of its inherent features. Again, it simply passes data.
No, there is no significant functional difference.