Author: Warren Togami Jr. 2013-08-17 00:08:22
Published on: 2013-08-17T00:08:22+00:00
On August 16, 2013, a discussion took place on the Bitcoin-development mailing list regarding changes made in bitcoinj-0.10 release notes that required Bloom-capable (0.8+) peers by default and would disconnect from older nodes, to avoid accidental bandwidth saturation on mobile devices. However, concerns were raised about user security and the potential for sybil attacks. Peter Todd suggested that creating "SPV honeypots" could attract a disproportionate percentage of the total SPV population and make it easier to harm SPV nodes. He also suggested that dropping transactions could be used to lock users out of their money. Mike Hearn responded by stating that they receive complaints about battery life and bandwidth impact even with Bloom filtering, and that using people's bandwidth for relaying blocks is not feasible, especially since most SPV nodes are behind NAT. Warren Togami Jr. proposed a sane default that better protects users by allowing non-bloom peers if plugged into power and Wi-Fi, and scaling back to the less secure behavior when battery and bandwidth matter. The conversation also touched on future changes in how P2P networks work, particularly as mobiles and tablets dominate the market.
Updated on: 2023-06-07T15:58:26.588590+00:00