Author: Peter Todd 2015-07-15 15:59:03
Published on: 2015-07-15T15:59:03+00:00
In an email conversation, Peter Todd argues that Blockcypher's "confidence factor" model is another sybil attacking network monitoring tool. For Blockcypher to work effectively, it needs to connect to a large percentage of nodes on the network, which is essentially a sybil attack. This approach uses up connection slots for the entire network and isn't scalable; if more than a few services were doing that, the Bitcoin network would become significantly less reliable, and could eventually collapse entirely. Todd also notes that he has seen evidence of this happening in practice. He explains that while he disagrees with Blockcypher's business model, he respects it.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T02:45:55.319667+00:00