On Sunday, December 12th, 2021 at 9:23 AM, Aymeric Vitte via bitcoin-dev
<bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> Using the Tor network to bypass censorship for bitcoin can work but is a very
> poor solution, the Tor network is very centralized, very small, watched and
> controlled, with plenty of features that do not apply to other protocols than
> those made to be used with the Tor Browser, Pieter gave a simple example,
> that you can solve easily changing the circuits, the problem remains that you
> really need to be a super expert to escape all the dangers of the Tor
> network, not even sure it's possible unless you use something else than the
> Tor project code
FWIW, I wasn't talking about anything related to Tor's protocol or organization
at all. What I meant is that because creating a hidden service has ~0 cost, it
is trivial for anyone to spin up an arbitrary number of Bitcoin hidden
services. Thus, if one runs a node that only connects to hidden services, it is
fairly easily eclipsable.
It's just one example of a downside of (a particular way of) using Tor. That
doesn't mean I recommend against using Tor for Bitcoin traffic at all; my point
was simply that there are trade-offs, and aspects of privacy of the P2P
protocol that Tor does not address, and thus one shouldn't assume that all
problems are solved by "just use Tor".
Cheers,
--
Pieter
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