Author: Rusty Russell 2015-10-20 06:25:04
Published on: 2015-10-20T06:25:04+00:00
Mats Jerratsch, a Bitcoin enthusiast, expresses concern about security threats to the bitcoin network. He mentions a hypothetical attacker who could MITM (man in the middle) internet connections and build a large network that points to the same node, without necessarily just blocking payments. While there's not much anyone can do about dishonest nodes joining the network, Mats is encouraged by the math behind the network's security and believes that making it expensive to attack is the first thing to tackle. Rusty, who responds to Mats' concerns, points out that Bitcoin currently uses centralized checkpoints to protect itself from such attacks, as there is no really good way of doing it. However, using beacons makes it easier to indicate the size of the network statistically, which could mitigate the issue. Rusty acknowledges that this method requires either SPV or full nodes to check the anchor, but he likes the idea of having all (or most) lightning nodes also be full Bitcoin nodes. Rusty believes that supporting both will be necessary, but expects that for now, most nodes will be full nodes.
Updated on: 2023-05-23T20:58:06.913116+00:00