25
votes
Accepted
Why doesn’t Bitcoin use UDP to do Blockpropagation?
The Bitcoin system doesn't have just one network protocol: Any way of obtaining the blocks is equally valid-- blocks over freenet, over satellite broadcast, over the P2P network, all work just as ...
- 7,449
7
votes
Accepted
Why does the daemon require peers in order to start mining?
I wanted to start mining bitcoin from the genesis block
I'm pretty sure regtest will let you do that.
why wouldn't the peer just let me mine on my own chain and not broadcast my results to anybody?...
- 28.6k
7
votes
What is a Feeler Connection? When is it used?
A feeler connection is a short-lived outbound connection that only starts up after your node has established the required 8 outbound connections and 2 block-relay-only outbound connections. The ...
- 231
6
votes
Accepted
Testnet peers list (with IP addresses)
Just use a testnet dns seeder.
Type this into your terminal:
dig A testnet-seed.bitcoin.jonasschnelli.ch
or
dig A seed.tbtc.petertodd.org
for IPv6
dig AAAA testnet-seed.bitcoin.jonasschnelli.ch
- 5,896
6
votes
Accepted
How do I still have connections without forwarding port 8333?
When your node is not accepting inbound connections (either because there's NAT in the way or because you passed -listen=0 to Bitcoin) it still makes "outbound connections." These are connections to ...
- 28.6k
6
votes
How to confirm how many peers a node has?
When a node requests one of it's neighbours for a list of it's peers, that node responds with a list of all of it's neighbours.
No it doesn't. It responds with list of nodes that its aware of being ...
- 7,449
5
votes
Can an unconfirmed transaction that only Blockchain.info shows be manually re-broadcast?
Old question, but answer might be helpful for someone.
To get a raw transaction append:
?format=hex
to the transaction URL.
For example:
https://blockchain.info/tx/...
- 223
5
votes
Accepted
Stopping Hash field in GetBlocks Message
Node1 announces block B3, using an 'inv' message with B3's gash.
Node2 does not know about B3, or its parent B2, but does know the grandparent B1. It sends a getblocks message, starting from B1, but ...
- 83k
5
votes
Accepted
How Do Peers Choose Which Peer To Trust?
either I broke some rule, or the other person did; In this case, how does my client find a trusted peer
Your client does not trust any peer. It fully validates the blockchain. In the event of ...
- 60.6k
5
votes
What is a block-relay-only connection? What is it used for?
Block relay connections were added to bitcoin core in v0.19.0.1 in November 2019. Their purpose is to harden the peer-to-peer network against partition attacks. They do this through a clever ...
- 231
4
votes
Accepted
Regtest: One node nullifying other node's balance
You only see the balance of blocks that have at least another 100 on top. This is because coinbase outputs only become spendable after 101 confirmations (the maturity period).
After the nodes ...
- 83k
4
votes
Accepted
How are messages exactly sent in bitcoin p2p protocol
I got the answer myself. Sorry!
The src/net.cpp has this logic which explains all:
void CNode::BeginMessage(const char* pszCommand) EXCLUSIVE_LOCK_FUNCTION(cs_vSend)
{
ENTER_CRITICAL_SECTION(...
- 105
4
votes
Accepted
What is the difference between inbound and outbound connections?
If your node initiated the connection, it's outbound, otherwise it's inbound. Nodes will send and receive data from both types of connections exactly the same way.
maxconnections sets a limit on the ...
4
votes
How to confirm how many peers a node has?
It returns some plausible peers, not all of its peers.
You have no way of knowing any specific details about them, if they’re sybil, not operational, or not useful. The software tries to work out ...
- 15k
3
votes
Can we make Sybil attacks virtually impossible?
Proof of work is what makes Sybil attacks very difficult. Put simply, you trust the chain with the most proof-of-work on it. This cannot easily be faked (at least without significant mining power). It ...
- 7,619
3
votes
Total amount of nodes and avarage active peer number
Does anyone know where to find a reliable source for finding out a total amount of active bitcoin nodes?
http://getaddr.bitnodes.io/ tracks listening peers on IPv4 and IPv6 only. The number is ...
- 15k
3
votes
How to make bitcoind connect to more nodes?
Bitcoind will never make more than 8 outgoing connections. By default, it will allow up to 128 connections (see -maxconnections), but that includes incoming ones.
Available connection slots of fully ...
- 83k
3
votes
Accepted
How to make more than 1 nodes of mine connect each other?
You can add them to each other nodes bitcoin config file. If you want to connect to a specific node among others, use addnode=IP:PORT in your config. If you'd like to only connect to your own nodes ...
- 11.3k
3
votes
Can malicious peer hack freshly installed bitcoin-core node
Does freshly installed bitcoin-core node have genesis block included in the installation?
Yes.
This fresh node contacts some peer for downloading blockchain. Can malicious peer give node wrong ...
- 50.7k
3
votes
Can cryptocurrencies never be fully decentralized because finding peers is centralized?
... it needs to fetch peers from a centralized source.
Not exactly. Once you are connected to the network, you will begin to receive lists of IP addresses and ports of known clients.
There is a list ...
- 966
3
votes
Accepted
Bitcoin core: connect to specific peers from file
Within the data directory for your coin (/dir/for/yourcoin/.yourcoin) you will have a configuration file. Within this configuration file, you will want to place the line connect=IP ADDRESS:PORT
This ...
- 313
3
votes
Bitcoin core full node - Should I choose my peers or it's fine to use the hardcoded ones?
The list is just for bootstrapping, no need to manually list peers unless you have others you specifically want to maintain connectivity with.
- 31
3
votes
Accepted
Transaction propagation criteria vs mempool inclusion cirteria
There are also the 'standardness rules', which are separate from 'validity rules'. So this means a transaction can be either valid and standard, valid but non-standard, or invalid.
A node can choose ...
- 17.2k
3
votes
Bitcoin Core stalled peer logic during initial block download
During IBD, there is a "moving window" of 1024 blocks ahead from the current height, from which blocks can be requested from peers for parallel download. When a peer has an open slot for a ...
- 71
2
votes
Accepted
Bitcoin peer to peer network source code
The source code for Bitcoin can be found at https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin. The P2P part is integrated within the core Bitcoin code, and is not available separately.
- 3,411
2
votes
Accepted
How are transactions efficiently distributed to network nodes before inclusion within blocks?
Have a look into the specifications https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Protocol_specification
Check the "inv" --> "getdata" --> "tx" sequence of transaction distribution
- 6,592
2
votes
Could the BGP attack be used to split the Bitcoin network?
Having control over BGP and being able to split the Internet in two pieces can indeed be used to carry out an attack against some Bitcoin users. It might not even be that economically infeasible as ...
- 1,394
2
votes
bitcoind hub-nodes
It is a list of nodes that blockchain.info considers to be well-reachable.
It's nothing authoritative - anyone can run a node, and there is no such concept as a 'hub node' on the network.
As to why ...
- 83k
2
votes
Accepted
no IPv6 peers connecting to my node
The issue was that bitcoind was discovering my wrong IPv6 address. (It mistook my link IPv6 address for my public one.) I set --discover=0 and set my IPv4 and IPv6 addresses manually with --externalip....
- 4,307
2
votes
Accepted
How can I get my peer's ban score for my node?
Correct: there's no provision in the P2P network protocol for your peers to tell you what ban score they've computed for you.
Since each node connected to you separately computes a ban score using ...
- 11.3k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible