Author: Chris Pacia 2015-08-17 21:44:56
Published on: 2015-08-17T21:44:56+00:00
In a discussion on the bitcoin-dev mailing list, Peter Todd argued that using Hearn-style Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) mode is not very secure for wallets, and having volunteers run full nodes does not help much with security either. He explained that Sybil attacking the IP address space is easier than acquiring enough hashing power to create false confirmations, so any attacker who can do the former will likely be running the full node that the wallet connects to anyway. Ultimately, Todd believes that Hearn-style SPV is similar to trusting anyone with a non-trivial amount of hashing power. The discussion then moved to whether a full node would be more secure against an attacker with a non-trivial amount of hashing power. However, some argued that the failure model is not specific to SPV and could also apply to full nodes.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T20:12:12.059520+00:00