Bitcoin Developer Outrage Following Deliberate Testnet Disruption by Fellow Enthusiast
Summary:
Bitcoin developers express anger at fellow enthusiast, Jameson Lopp, who disrupted one of Bitcoin's testnets by creating an equivalent of three years' worth of blocks in a week. This action stalled app testing for some developers. Lopp defended his action as a means to expose a vulnerability in the testnet. The incident has ignited debates in the Bitcoin community about such activities, which some consider a general security risk. Lopp advocates for a reset of Bitcoin’s testnet to fix the vulnerability and reinstate mining rewards.
Numerous Bitcoin programmers are outraged with a fellow Bitcoin enthusiast who confessed to deliberately disrupting one of Bitcoin's testnets by creating blocks equivalent to three years' worth in just one week. This action caused some developers to suspend the apps they were evaluating. Francis Pouliot, a founder of the noncustodial Bitcoin exchange and payments company Bull Bitcoin, vocally criticized the disruptor for messing with the testnets. It was later revealed that Jameson Lopp, a cypherpunk and co-founder of digital asset self-custody firm Casa, was responsible for the disruption. In an April 28 post on the decentralized social media platform Nostr, Lopp admitted that his disruptive attack resulted in over 165,000 blocks (equivalent to three years) being generated on Bitcoin’s testnet in a single week, costing about $1 in electricity. Nonetheless, Lopp argued that this seemingly trivial exploit — requiring just 20 lines of code — actually underscores a testnet vulnerability he has previously highlighted.
In a disruption or "griefing" attack, the attacker floods the network with transactions, thus increasing its load and disrupting its normal functioning. Data from the Bitcoin testnet showed the hashrate jumping to 2,315 TH/s on April 19, before falling back to 86 TH/s on April 30, as per mempool.space. However, several people including Pouliot, view Lopp's actions as disrupting the system simply to force people to switch to another— likely testnet4.
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The disruptive attack disrupted node synchronization on the Bitcoin testnet, as narrated by Leo Weese, the technical content lead at the Lightning Labs, the creators of the Bitcoin Layer 2 Lightning Network. “We may potentially have to abandon permission-less testing networks permanently,” warned Weese.
A participant in the Bitcoin Talk Thread stated that Lopp’s actions have triggered a “testnet war.” They further posited that individuals like Lopp should be banished from the Bitcoin testnets and they even deemed Lopp a “general security risk for Bitcoin in its entirety.”
Lopp, on the other hand, insists on a reset of Bitcoin’s testnet to rectify the testnet “timewarp” vulnerability and to reinstate mining rewards earned from the testnet, which he stated had dwindled to virtually nothing now.
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Published At
4/30/2024 6:31:11 AM
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