Author: Eric Voskuil 2016-06-28 16:45:58
Published on: 2016-06-28T16:45:58+00:00
The discussion revolves around the rationale behind BIP 151, which proposes network encryption to protect against transaction censorship, peer censorship, fingerprinting and other issues. The security of the P2P protocol is questioned in the case where encryption and authentication become pervasive. While trust on first use (TOFU) does not solve this problem, an authentication scheme is necessary to protect against MITM during encryption initialization. Encryption alone cannot protect against a MITM attack in an anonymous and permissionless network. Widespread application of this model is potentially problematic and designing a distributed system that requires authentication but without identity and without central control may be more challenging than Bitcoin itself. In conclusion, it is proposed that Bloom filters should be isolated from the P2P protocol and that BIP 151 must be deployed together with an authentication scheme.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T18:59:19.388165+00:00