Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Protocol extensions

From: Wladimir <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 10:10:23 +0100

On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 10:43 PM, Jordan Mack <[email-masked]>wrote:

> On 12/18/2011 1:19 PM, Stefan Thomas wrote:
>  > Let those who want anonymity connect through Tor, Freenet, etc. It's
>  > easy to add anonymity via an extra layer, but it is impossible to add
>  > performance on top of a slow system.
>
> That's a very good point. This is needless complication at the protocol
> level. Alternatives, like Tor, could be used to provide the desired
>

Agreed. Please don't roll your own onion network. It is very non-trivial to
get security and anonymity to an acceptable level. Securing cryptocurrency
itself is a big enough challenge already.

Another reason it is better to use Tor is because of the mixing effect. A
bitcoin-specific onion network would be subject to easy traffic analysis if
it only carries Bitcoin messages.

effect. Developers could even choose to integrate Tor functionality into
> the client itself at some point.
>

Yes, good idea. I've thought about making a "bitcoin tor bundle", analogous
to the firefox Tor bundle that is available from the Tor site itself.

Probably would need to package the block chain with it, as downloading that
over Tor takes ages and causes unnecessary load on the network...

Wladimir