Author: Peter Todd 2014-12-29 10:39:52
Published on: 2014-12-29T10:39:52+00:00
On December 29, 2014, Mike Hearn wrote about the limitations of DNS as a protocol for learning about the p2p network. The privacy provided by DNS is too good, and there's no way to figure out who made the request to subject them to additional targeting. A connection-oriented protocol gets rid of all those protections and gives seed operators monetization opportunities like selling usage statistics and per-client targeted results. He talked about getting rid of all the "call-home" functionality that previously gave this type of insight. A connection-oriented seed protocol gives us this right back. Another issue is ISP's censoring DNS results with dumb automated systems to block malware, which can be easily fixed with Gregory Maxwell's suggestion of permuting the results with XOR. However, that kind of end-user driven solution really misses out on the needs of other Bitcoin stakeholders like law enforcement and marketing companies.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T15:08:41.246206+00:00