bitprojects

There is a tendency to believe that nodes and node counts generally represent individuals in some reasonable ratio. This is a false belief. A single individual or entity can control tens of thousands of fully functional nodes, at far less cost than assumed. This should be defended against in various ways.

@BitcoinBombadil That was me as well. I've been trying to prove out this issue for 2 years.

In the past, I’ve noticed similar odd count fluctuations for both Core & Knots node counts as well on Bitnodes.io back when I was tracking daily… Not sure what the explanation is

bitcoin is the only chain that could handle this.

Adding in extra data storage and data distribution as a requirement of running a node, without compensation or further incentive, dissuades people from running nodes, and having fewer actual independent nodes makes the bitcoin network centralized and fail.

They didn’t just make missteps in communication. They pretended real problems didn’t exist. Instead of fixing the bugs, they changed documentation to save face. If Bitcoiners don’t hold each other to high standards, no one will. Up the Filters. Down with Nihilistic bullshit.

1. 100k op_return dramatically increases the attack surface of bitcoin 2. no one is born in the wrong body

Periodic reminder that the organizer of the Bitcoin Conference, Bitcoin Magazine, is actively hostile to BIP-110 and shitcoin-agnostic.. Why pay more than $500 to attend a conference that is organized by those who are not bitcoin maximalists?

There is a tendency to believe that nodes and node counts generally represent individuals in some reasonable ratio. This is a false belief. A single individual or entity can control tens of thousands of fully functional nodes, at far less cost than assumed. This should be defended against in various ways.

@Bitcoinapolis55 Nodes are one signal, but node statistics can be gamed as we just saw here: x.com/bitprojects_io… Hashrate is harder to game, so it is a better metric in some ways, but it is also imperfect because of mining centralization.

TLDR: Nodes Matter but explain "Miners/Hashrate -vs- Knots Nodes (w/wo BIP-110 signaling)" Comparing to past BIPs is fine but not overly future forward when we are trying to TUSH PUSH BIP-110 into the End Zone, preferably way before September 2026. ==== Gory details: We have a Communication Issue on the Knots BIP-110 side. The language is not clear on the "all Nodes Matter" especially comparing to Miners and hashrate. I wish Dathon and Luke could be on the same page but it is a hard thing to wrap your head around and it was one of the things that first threw off Holdlonaut and me supporting BIP-110. Miners/Hashrate compared to Knots nodes w/wo BIP-110 adoption and signaling. I have heard Mechanic and Luke explain things using past examples and showing how we are farther ahead than some point in the past but is there anything written down that we can consume and more importantly act on, advertise, educate as in right now instead of posting on X? I am raising the alarm because after hearing about Core breaking code to force people to upgrade to Core V30+ without backward compatibility, how can we get people (Walker even) to upgrade to Knots instead of their desired (wrong) path? Dose Upgrading nodes running Core Pre-V30 to Knots make sense and how do we push for this important change? Friendly reminder: 1) Bitcoin Core Node 2) Bitcoin Knots Node - Which is 98% still Core Code with the 2% difference Luke has been protecting since 2011 and we are rightly fighting for, for 'like' forever. Me: "2%"

It was never intended as an attack on BIP-110 but I can see how it has been viewed that way. But all of the nodes are now shut down and will not return. The desired outcome of this 2 year project was to discuss (and then prove, as requested) a vulnerability in how bitcoin nodes communicate, and that outcome has been reached -- everyone who needs to be aware of this is now aware of this. My decision to switch to knots last year, and then signal bip110 almost 2 weeks ago now, was intended to signal my believe that we need to mitigate the widened attack surface that 100k op_return creates. @dathon_ohm

@bitprojects_io @A86664949 @DukeDukingtonRD @RandyMcMillan @vicariousdrama @LiliH65289916 Have you stopped your attack on BIP-110?

So much of BIP-110 is support is downstream of technical ignorance. The class of 2020=2025 watched Saylor podcasts and learnt bitcoin through metaphors. Very easy for a malicious populist to manipulate these people.

I intend to spin up some ways to pull down the full BGP routing table via API (will also put the code on github, pulls from FRR, can be spun up on cloud providers that support BGP), I think it would be useful to query the full AS path of a given node and use that for warnings. In the case of what I stood up, all of the ASNs and subnets shared common AS path ASNs.

@A86664949 @dathon_ohm @DukeDukingtonRD @RandyMcMillan @vicariousdrama @LiliH65289916 @A86664949 tagging you as I've been flagged as spam. not trying to be spam. pun intended.

I have commented multiple times already, but no I am not a supporter of 100k op_return, my opinion from my infrastructure background is that this change dramatically increases the attack surface of bitcoin, in both technical and non-technical ways. I support things that mitigate this expansion of the attack surface.

@dathon_ohm @A86664949 @DukeDukingtonRD @RandyMcMillan @vicariousdrama @LiliH65289916 1. these are now shut down and will not return, the intended outcome of the 2 year project has been reached 2. 100k op_return increases the attack surface of bitcoin in very dangerous ways, bip110 must succeed x.com/bitprojects_io…

@A86664949 @DukeDukingtonRD @RandyMcMillan @vicariousdrama @LiliH65289916 This is a known attack by a suspected spam supporter. About 3,000 BIP-110 nodes are fake. This has already been acknowledged and there is nothing that BIP-110 supporters can do about it.

All of my nodes have been completely offline for 24+ hours and will not return. If this were a true sybil attack there would/could have been actual negative impacts to the bitcoin node network, especially as there were hundreds of nodes that were -only- connecting to my nodes at any given time. A lot more people now know what sybil and eclipse attacks are, and how to detect/investigate them. I have some ideas on ways to bring in more BGP routing table data into bitcoin node decisions, including not just origin AS but full AS path. In what I stood up as a demonstration, I also was able to defeat asmap because I used multiple origin ASNs, but if there is visibility available into the AS paths to reach nodes, that would then be detectable.

Current inbound connection stats: 80,526 inbound connections from 35,127 unique source IPs. Current outbound TCP/8333 traffic: 5475.1 Mbps This will be the last post of these stats, as I will begin shutting down this node infrastructure at midnight UTC. The intended outcome of this 2 year project was to point out (and then prove, as requested) that there is a significant vulnerability in how bitcoin nodes communicate. That outcome has been reached, as the people who can understand the vulnerability have observed and acknowledged. There is no longer a reason to keep this running, so I'm shutting it down and will be looking for other ways to contribute. Connection stats details: === Inbound TCP/8333 (bitcoin) Connection and Network Stats === Total unique destination IPs: 3042 Total unique destination /24 subnets: 12 Total destination subnets sharing /16 boundary: 0 Total ASNs: 3 Total subnets advertised per ASN: 4 Total inbound connections: 80526 Total unique source IPs: 35127 === Source IP Connection Thresholds === Source IPs with 8+ connections: 653 Source IPs with 10+ connections: 433 Source IPs with 12+ connections: 307 Source IPs with 16+ connections: 178 Source IPs with 32+ connections: 38 Source IPs with 64+ connections: 14 Source IPs with 512+ connections: 0 Source IPs with 2048+ connections: 0 --- To seed maintainers @pwuille @TheBlueMatt @_jonasschnelli_ @peterktodd @provoost @emzy @wiz @achow101 @LukeDashjr @leo_haf Please remove all seed entries for nodes in the following IP blocks: 45.40.98.0/24 66.163.223.0/24 89.106.27.0/24 103.47.56.0/24 103.246.186.0/24 123.100.246.0/24 173.46.87.0/24 174.140.231.0/24 184.174.95.0/24 203.11.72.0/24 206.206.109.0/24 216.107.135.0/24

@dathon_ohm @CubistRoy @BlueDavid My motives started long before I switched 3k nodes from core to knots (last year). This entire multiyear project was to prove out a vulnerability in how nodes communicate, after being told I was wrong, and to prove it. I'm entirely open to suggestions on how to support bip110.

@CubistRoy @BlueDavid The fake nodes were created by a third party having nothing to do with BIP-110. I am unsure as to his motives, but I do not condone the creation of fake BIP-110 nodes. It hurts us more than helps.

Another principled miner has joined the growing chorus of voices affirming that Bitcoin is money, not an arbitrary database. Congratulations to @BlueDavid and 234 Alberta. Onward to activation!

@dathon_ohm @dathon_ohm I'm fully open to suggestions on how to best support bip110.

@dathon_ohm No, I was running core (all 3k) last year, but when it became clear that core30 dramatically increases the attack surface of bitcoin, I switched to knots. Then last week upgraded +bip110. These have been running for over a year, and currently have 78k inbound connections.

About 3,000 BIP-110 nodes are fake, so our share of the network is likely closer to 7 or 8% than 10%, which I have maintained since I witnessed the artificial spike. Node counts should always be viewed with skepticism.

Current connection stats. Going to automate this post.

@evoskuil @GrassFedBitcoin Sorry, let me know if I'm misunderstanding the question. These are all the same nodes, the same ones that you found the clock skew issue with (when it was VMs vs containers). I switched to knots last year, and I switched to knots+bip110 last week. Both times were noticed.

@bitprojects_io @GrassFedBitcoin The above comments seem to be conflating your BIP110 nodes with the ones that you are reporting on. Would you please clarify and quantify this distinction?

These guys appear to be spreading 2500 IPs over their BIP-110 nodes and 500 over their Core nodes. Accounts for the 2k spike we saw the other day x.com/GrassFedBitcoi…