Bitcoin Node Challenge feedback

[NotATether]

The Bitcoin Node Challenge thread, for those who do not know, is a topic where I distribute 14 merits for people who can run a node for two weeks. It is directly responsible for ranking up many Jr Members to Members, Members to Full Members, Full Member to Senior, and other ranks.

Lately though, I have received a large amount of concern from forum members about account farmers using the challenge to gain even more merit, with the eventual goal for enrolling into signature campaigns. As this would not be fair for honest participants, I am thinking of tightening the rules and entry requirements.

There are a few modifications I have considered making for future participants of this challenge which are listed below, but I only want to implement one or two of them.

1 ) Restrict Newbies from joining the challenge
2 ) Restrict Jr. Members from joining the challenge
3 ) Require a screenshot of the terminal or Bitcoin Core window and disallow text submissions
4 ) Continue to allow text-based submissions but they must be accompanied with a screenshot of the system information neofetch, msinfo32.exe (aka System Information on Windows) or About This Mac
5 ) Restrict people who have received more than X% of their total merit in the last 120 days from other/ex participants from joining
6 ) Require a minimum merit amount in the last 120 days to qualify, just like in signature campaigns
7 ) Kick out participants who send more than X merit to other/ex participants. Reactionary procedures don't work very well compared to prevention, from my experience.
8 ) Require getnetworkinfo output in addition to getblockchaininfo, including IP addresses

I am open for new suggestions, and will implement the idea(s) that have the most consensus.

Feedback will be taken until November 1, 2025, after which I will make a final decision.

In any case, discontinuing the challenge is not an option at this time. We should not cave in to Dead Internet Theory and bots/account farms in general.

Local rule: To avoid flames, and conflicts of interest, you cannot post here if you are currently participating in the challenge thread and haven't finished yet. Your post will automatically be deleted.

[Mahiyammahi]

Restricting JR & Newbie's would be the first step for it.
 But I think  system information neofetch/msinfo won't be good, if anyone choose to buy a Rdp/vps server to run these nodes then the system fingerprint might be submited by previously some user's already. Cause those devices are getting used by many user's and handing over to one user's to another user after not renew the deviced.

But I think most appropriate way to restrict the Signature campaign user's & Merit abuser if you could filterout their X %  of received merits  from several merit farming topic. There is a common pattern who is trying to exploit this system is they often received merit from only a certain group of people/ certain  topic , they are actually not adding no real value. But it would be so much works for you to filterout them.

I hope you will findout some volunteer who can help you to filterout these user's. As for the network IP , everyone is anonymous in this forum I don't think by exposing the IP address to publicly would be great.

Minimum Numbers of merit in 120 days to join ain't bad. But I think you could have structured this more like, suddenly wake up accounts won't get chance to perticipate in this challange. Over all I think this challange motivates new user's to run a bitcoin core node, learn more about bitcoin Technical issues. This was from me , my opinion. Just pick whichever you see fits and majority community See's it fits

[Satofan44]

I'm really glad that you are listening to feedback.   The same can't be said for many senior users of this forum. When evaluating things like this it is worthwhile to go back to the basics. Does the current setup serve the intended goals of the challenge? Let's think about it. If the main goal is to encourage people to actually run a node and possibly continue to do so after the challenge is over why should we allow low ranked members to join at all? The potential participants are split into several groups:

1) Those who are doing it to learn or want to run a node.
2) Those who are only doing it to earn merit.

The users from group 1 will not care in principle whether they can earn the merit or not. They can participate silently, and if they still want the merit they can join later at a higher rank. This group will not suffer from raising rank requirements.
Furthermore, I want you also to consider why 14 consecutive days? Because the reward is 14 merit? Why should it be that short anyway? Generally I am strongly in favor of having fewer real participants and rewarding them for significant efforts. Why not run the challenge in weeks? It would have several benefits. For the users it would give them more flexibility as they can post their update any day of the week. For the challenge side it would increase the duration of participation that is needed to earn 14 merit and it would reward more consistent and disciplined users.

Anywhere between 8 to 14 weeks would be good. Do you have any personal reasons against it? I can understand that in the current setup it would make it easier to cheat perhaps, but with the expanded setup requiring more information I think that there should be no issues. You must understand that earning 14 merits can be pretty hard unless (we are biased by our perception of users who easily earn this amount of merits, survivorship bias):
1) You join stupid pizza or art contests.
2) You have connections to other users, accounts, local merit farmers.
3) You have good technical knowledge.

Merit comes in waves, (depending on where they are posting) sometimes it can take some users weeks to gain 14 merits if they get it at all all. In addition to this here are my thoughts on your ideas.

2 ) Restrict Jr. Members from joining the challenge

Yes.

3 ) Require a screenshot of the terminal or Bitcoin Core window and disallow text submissions

Maybe, if you don't go with 4 instead.

4 ) Continue to allow text-based submissions but they must be accompanied with a screenshot of the system information neofetch, msinfo32.exe (aka System Information on Windows) or About This Mac

Either 3 or 4 is good, but I think 4 is better. Couldn't in the case of 3 users just trade screenshots? Let's say that I have a node and I just multitask and make screenshots and distribute it among my merit farming buddies or accounts?

5 ) Restrict people who have received more than X% of their total merit in the last 120 days from other/ex participants from joining

Would it be easy to track this in an automated way? If not, don't do it. It seems like it could increase the time needed for evaluating the challenge several times.

6 ) Require a minimum merit amount in the last 120 days to qualify, just like in signature campaigns

Yes.

7 ) Kick out participants who send more than X merit to other/ex participants. Reactionary procedures don't work very well compared to prevention, from my experience.

If you add this as a rule to the contest somehow, could negative trust from defaulttrust be given afterwards? If so, then it would be worthwhile.

8 ) Require getnetworkinfo output in addition to getblockchaininfo, including IP addresses

Good, but not sure about IP addresses because: VPNs and exposing data. I would not want to share the IP of my own node here.

In any case, discontinuing the challenge is not an option at this time. We should not cave in to Dead Internet Theory and bots/account farms in general.

Good.

But I think  system information neofetch/msinfo won't be good, if anyone choose to buy a Rdp/vps server to run these nodes then the system fingerprint might be submited by previously some user's already. Cause those devices are getting used by many user's and handing over to one user's to another user after not renew the deviced.

It is a minor amount of cases. Anyhow, this can be improved by making the screenshots timestamped. Linux users could do date && uname -a && neofetch and screenshot it. That would give a timestamped screenshot of everything together. There are still ways to fake it but most users will either not have the skills or they won't be willing to take the risk. If the cheating is ever discovered retroactively then you risk your whole account.

[NotATether]

I will answer the replies later, but there is another one I forgot to add:

- Hacked accounts, and bought & sold accounts should not be allowed to participate in any case.

I think this one is self explanatory.

[KingsDen]

Any thread that gives away merits must be abused. I also do not support the outright halt if the thread but a lil tightening of the rules.
You can consider to tighten the rules a bit.
Let the participants make a post to say their challenges encountered during running the node. Non unique posts could be disqualified.

- Hacked accounts, and bought & sold accounts should not be allowed to participate in any case.

I think this one is self explanatory.

How to prove hacked, sold or stolen accounts will be an additional headache.

[Zwei]

6 ) Require a minimum merit amount in the last 120 days to qualify, just like in signature campaigns

i would say this would work the best.

you can require a minimum true earned merits (excluding merits from other merit giveaway threads and a certain X% from other/ex participants).
it would also restrict newbies and jr members if you set the requirement at +10 merits. so you will basically be covering 4 of the new modifications in just 1.

- Hacked accounts, and bought & sold accounts should not be allowed to participate in any case.

I think this one is self explanatory.

How to prove hacked, sold or stolen accounts will be an additional headache.

he can leave that to the community. 99% of the time, hacked accounts are old abandoned accounts that wake up out of the blue and start posting in a complete different style, so it's not that much of a headache to prove.

[uche6215]

This is very much interested. The number one and two should be a mandatory rules in the challenge then you can add others to it which should be the adding the screenshot and other information of the system but adding the IP address might not be accurate because someone might connect to another person internet or a public internet and all the IP address will be the same. Mostly institutions that offer internet and most students or nearby neighbors use those service to browse the internet. And another thing I will suggest is, you should tell some guys to monitor the challenge thread.

[lovesmayfamilis]

How to prove hacked, sold or stolen accounts will be an additional headache.

Why not? If an account is already tagged as bought or hacked, those users are already banned from participating. They won't even try, and those who haven't yet been detected will have to either carefully conceal the previous owner's traces or wait for the negative tag that DTs used to assign when they discovered violations of contest rules or signature campaigns. I would say it's a pretty risky undertaking to break a rule that will give a person 14 merits, but then they will have to constantly worry about being discovered and red-tagged.

Speaking of screenshots, many probably remember how cheaters were caught in this same contest using certain parameters that the cheaters didn't consider noticeable .

[ABCbits]

There are a few modifications I have considered making for future participants of this challenge which are listed below, but I only want to implement one or two of them.

3 ) Require a screenshot of the terminal or Bitcoin Core window and disallow text submissions
6 ) Require a minimum merit amount in the last 120 days to qualify, just like in signature campaigns

Among 8 point you shared, i believe these 2 points are best ones. But to make sharing screenshot among account farmer more difficult, it should also include screenshot of browser that open website which shows current time/date.

I will answer the replies later, but there is another one I forgot to add:

- Hacked accounts, and bought & sold accounts should not be allowed to participate in any case.

I think this one is self explanatory.

That point can be extended to account who got tagged due to spamming (whether using AI or not) or other questionable behavior. Although reviewing the proof could be big burden.

[yahoo62278]

Obviously you are giving 1 merit per day to those who complete the challenge/task, but would you be open to 1 or 2 merits per week? Less motivating for the farmers to participate as they wouldn't make it to jr member by completing the task. This is irrelevant if you implement the minimum rank to jr or higher but gives you options.

Those genuinely interested wouldn't care about the merits anyways which is the only reason I mention it.

[Comeacross]

Adding a poll would have made it easier for people to pick their choice without having to make a post here.

My opinion;
Restricting newbies and Jr member is not a right move in my opinion. The lower rank users already got a lot of restrictions and adding to it seems like attempt to drive them away from this forum.

Option 5 and 7 will give you more work to do by monitoring their sent and received merits. I don't know about your schedule but you shouldn't waste your time on this.

Required a minimum amount of merit in the last 120 days to participate? This will encourage merit trading. The account farmers will easily beat this requirement by trading X amount of merits to account they intend to participate with.

I don't know how other options would help prevent accounts farmers from taking the advantage of the challenge to rank up their accounts.

yahoo62278 just made a perfect suggestion, I seconded.

It's good to reward people for their effort but not when they take your generosity for granted or try to abuse the system. Reduce the amount of merits significantly as suggested by yahoo62278. Interested people can still run the node regardless of the amount of merit involved but account farmers would definitely feel discourage and see it as a waste of time. It's better this way than allowing genuine lower ranks pay for the crime of farmers.

[Satofan44]

My opinion;
Restricting newbies and Jr member is not a right move in my opinion. The lower rank users already got a lot of restrictions and adding to it seems like attempt to drive them away from this forum.

New users are not entitled to anything here, as a new user you are a guest. This is not a valid argument against restrictions. Users that come here to participate or contribute will not care about this requirement. Users who come to the challenge to merit farm will definitely care about the restrictions.  

Required a minimum amount of merit in the last 120 days to participate? This will encourage merit trading. The account farmers will easily beat this requirement by trading X amount of merits to account they intend to participate with.

That is a good thing. This is an offense that warrants a negative rating from default trust and by engaging in it they will destroy their accounts. It does not matter when this will be discovered though, any bread crumbs from the past will help with the eventual discovery of a farmer.

[Zoomic]

...Those genuinely interested wouldn't care about the merits anyways which is the only reason I mention it.

How many are genuinely interested?
People who are genuinely interested are running their nodes privately.
If he implements these suggestion, that thread could die naturally. He should just try the first sets of rule adjustment and see how it goes.
Merit is the motivation for participation and if it is unduly altered people might lose interest in the thread.

[yahoo62278]

...Those genuinely interested wouldn't care about the merits anyways which is the only reason I mention it.

How many are genuinely interested?
People who are genuinely interested are running their nodes privately.
If he implements these suggestion, that thread could die naturally. He should just try the first sets of rule adjustment and see how it goes.
Merit is the motivation for participation and if it is unduly altered people might lose interest in the thread.

Any of the suggestions could kill the thread instantly, but letting farmers make a living off the thread isn't ideal and he realizes that. It's basically a try it and see thing at this point, gotta find a balance.

On the flip side, managers could just not hire accounts who participate in this type of stuff and deter farmers also, so it's not only on the OP.

[nutildah]

I like numbers 1, 2, and 3, although with 3 there would definitely be a noticeable dropoff in participants (is my hunch). And then more dropoffs with each subsequent restriction. Like I said before, I think this a noble job that you're doing, trying to help newcomers learn some of the basics of how bitcoin works. Its just weird to me when I click on the profile of a newer account and see their Favorite Topics are all merit farming threads. So kudos to you for giving thought to some changes.

[TypoTonic]

It is directly responsible for ranking up many Jr Members to Members, Members to Full Members, Full Member to Senior, and other ranks.

The 14 merits reward has the most impact on lower ranks and this is where the challenge is mostly abused for ranking up, so I agree with restricting Newbies and Jr Members from joining, as well as having a minimum of X earned merits as a requirement.

Lately though, I have received a large amount of concern from forum members about account farmers using the challenge to gain even more merit, with the eventual goal for enrolling into signature campaigns.

How about delaying the merit rewards for participants who complete the challenge until they reach full member rank (since it's the minimum required to join sig campaigns)? I think genuine participants won't mind this, but it would affect the progress of account farmers. Another suggestion I agree with is to have a longer challenge duration, with periodic rewards. Something like 1 merit per week, with a maximum of 14 weeks (around the same time it takes to reach full member rank).

[LoyceV]

I checked: I received my first transaction in Bitcoin Core less than a week after I joined Bitcointalk, and I've kept it running ever since. I did switch from full node to pruned and back a few times over the years, depending on available disk space. Installation is easy and shouldn't take more than a few minutes to set up, followed by a long sync time depending on hardware. That's barely worth 14 Merits.
Creating 14 posts about it makes it a tedious task, and I doubt anyone who really wants to run Bitcoin Core is going to do that. So that leaves only people who do it for the Merit, which makes me think you're reaching the wrong audience.
Do you have any idea how many of your "participants" still run (or even better: use) Bitcoin Core after a few months?

7 ) Kick out participants who send more than X merit to other/ex participants. Reactionary procedures don't work very well compared to prevention, from my experience.

If you add this as a rule to the contest somehow, could negative trust from defaulttrust be given afterwards?

This would basically mean those users will have to keep track of other (former) participants, and be careful not to Merit their posts. I wouldn't go down that road:

If a DT member tags you for something stupid involving merit (ie. probably anything less than selling merit), then they're not going to be a DT member for much longer.

(click the quote for full context)

There are still ways to fake it

I wouldn't be surprised if someone is already selling 14 posts with custom data to qualify for 14 Merits.

[NotATether]

OK, I'm here to comment on everyone's replies now.

I hope you will findout some volunteer who can help you to filterout these user's.

This is something I want to do eventually and I'm sure there will be no shortage of volunteers here. But primarily for compiling the reports.

Minimum Numbers of merit in 120 days to join ain't bad. But I think you could have structured this more like, suddenly wake up accounts won't get chance to perticipate in this challange.

Not a bad idea.

Furthermore, I want you also to consider why 14 consecutive days? Because the reward is 14 merit? Why should it be that short anyway? Generally I am strongly in favor of having fewer real participants and rewarding them for significant efforts. Why not run the challenge in weeks? It would have several benefits. For the users it would give them more flexibility as they can post their update any day of the week. For the challenge side it would increase the duration of participation that is needed to earn 14 merit and it would reward more consistent and disciplined users.

Anywhere between 8 to 14 weeks would be good. Do you have any personal reasons against it? I can understand that in the current setup it would make it easier to cheat perhaps, but with the expanded setup requiring more information I think that there should be no issues.

I don't have any issues doing this, and it would actually be very nice. Provided that I don't make users wait months for their first merits.

There are a few modifications I have considered making for future participants of this challenge which are listed below, but I only want to implement one or two of them.

3 ) Require a screenshot of the terminal or Bitcoin Core window and disallow text submissions
6 ) Require a minimum merit amount in the last 120 days to qualify, just like in signature campaigns

Among 8 point you shared, i believe these 2 points are best ones. But to make sharing screenshot among account farmer more difficult, it should also include screenshot of browser that open website which shows current time/date.

A screenshot would definitely be helpful in this case, but I believe for the sake of continuity (so that there isn't a sudden increase in mistakes from manually processing screenshots), I would still require the text submission. Then both of these would have to be the same for the report to be valid.

Adding a poll would have made it easier for people to pick their choice without having to make a post here.

I tried to create a poll when I started this topic, but I don't think there is an option for one in the Reputation board.

Any of the suggestions could kill the thread instantly, but letting farmers make a living off the thread isn't ideal and he realizes that. It's basically a try it and see thing at this point, gotta find a balance.

On the flip side, managers could just not hire accounts who participate in this type of stuff and deter farmers also, so it's not only on the OP.

Prior to this, I did have many genuine users, and I have noticed a few weeks ago a sudden increase in the number of users that enrolled for some reason, but I didn't give it much thought then.

I would lose a lot of users (if we can call them that), sure, but I don't think I can count alt accounts as users in this scenario so it will probably be fine.

Do you have any idea how many of your "participants" still run (or even better: use) Bitcoin Core after a few months?

Unfortunately no. As you can see, I did not collect IP addresses or onion links.


Overall, I am heavily leaning towards requiring screenshots again, and I might implement some other stuff. Keep 'em coming.

[Lucius]

My opinion is that some of the questions being asked today should have been asked before the whole project started. In this way, we could say that the number of abusers is minimal, and that unique members who are not only interested in getting merits participate in this.

As for the restrictions, definitely the ones under points 1 and 2 make the most sense, and as for the screenshots, can they be taken as evidence considering that they are easy to forge?

[examplens]

This is something I want to do eventually and I'm sure there will be no shortage of volunteers here. But primarily for compiling the reports.

The promise of a reward can stimulate potential volunteers to help select users who comply with the 'rules'.

Every good idea eventually turns into its own opposition, and so does this initiative of yours. If there is even the slightest chance that it will be misused somehow, it will happen.
It would probably be best if those interested applied first, after which you will make a selection. Manual checking is always the most accurate