I'm doing some research into DNS Seeding, and alternative options to it. My main thought process is that, even if DNS Seeders are a functional but imperfect solution for initial peer discovery, they do still but a long term burden on the few individuals that are running the dns seeds, and do have a slight centralization factor. Additionally, the fall back of chainparams seeds generated using the included python script can fall out of date quickly, and requires house-keeping/pruning of dead peers . I've tried searching to see if anyone was already working on better options or improvements to the existing solutions, but I haven't had much luck.




For reference:
DNS Seeding is visible in the code here  and defined here with the codebase for the seeders (by Sipa), available here

 Chainparams peers that are hardcoded as a fallback to dnsseeds defined here and visible in the codebase here

Hi All!

I've been having this problem chew around in my head for a while, and have been thinking of potential reactions in regards to dealing with it. I haven't been able to come up with any solutions, so I wanted to see if the internet had any ideas.

Problem Context:
Two individual network users on the Bitcoin Network exist on the same chain, Alice & Bob.

Alice is a full node on the network, keeping a copy of the full chain, doing her part to keep the chain decentralized.

Bob is a bad actor, who wants to negatively impact Alice and the rest of the honest individuals in the network using the cheapest and most expedient way.

To do this, Bob takes advantage of the functionality available on the chain currently to append data to a transaction. In doing so, he attaches illicit content to be uploaded to the chain, something that is almost universally illegal, such as child pornography or revenge porn.

Using a service like crypto graffiti (https://github.com/1Hyena/cryptograffiti), which is functional on forks of Bitcoin, as well as the reference implementation/main chain itself or by uploading a string of 40-80KB increments, Bob, a sufficiently motivated attacker can upload content to the chain at a reasonably affordable cost.

Now, if Bob's transactions are successful, Alice and the rest of the honest network, are now hosting content that could be considered legally dubious in their home jurisdictions. Of course, that's not to get into the moral implications of hosting said content.

Now at this point in time, the damage is done, this data cannot be easily removed, as for Bitcoin to retain the respect, trust and censorship resistance (of transactions) that it has, the chain cannot reorganize. At the same time, even if there is a will by a large number of users, it would be economically and financially unfeasible, as if the offending transactions were not detected fast enough, they could be past the natural reorganization window.

Problem Statement:
If all of the above is true, as an honest node, miner or general user of bitcoin, what should the course of action be? Additionally, with any course of action what are the long-ranging implications of having the well poisoned so to speak?

Personal Opinion:
While I may have interjected my personal opinion a bit in the last paragraph of the problem statement, stating that the network cannot be easily changed for it to retain the trust and reliability that it has. I'm at a loss on the appropriate path on how to properly react to something of this nature.

What are y'all's thoughts?