Blocking Knots / Luke Coin for better mempool propagation.

[DaveF]

So I have been playing around with a script that once a hour runs getpeerinfo against the cli then parses the subver for "Knots" if it finds it it then runs disconnectnode against that IP and then setban against that IP.

I figure if they don't want to give me an accurate copy of the mempool then I really don't see a need to talk to them. It's just wasting resources to communicate with them.

There are some places that bitnodes that have the compete list of nodes running lukecoin, but unless I am missing it I don't see one that will let me dump all the IPs of those nodes at once so I can just block all their IPs all and be done.

Has anyone else come up with a better way of doing it?
Minor but having it both in a Windows version and linux version would be best but if not I can code around it.

Since the IP ban does eventually time out if they stop running censoring software eventually they will start being able to connect again.

-Dave

[gmaxwell]

It would be just a 1 or 2 line patch to just have your node disconnect any connected to you to more cleanly achieve the same end.  I'd suggest doing it in the code that processes receiving the subver, .. as soon as it read it could flag the peer for disconnection.

If you've never modified your nodes code it might be a fun exercise to figure out doing so.

I wouldn't recommend many people run such a change but if it's just you it doesn't matter to anyone else.  If it were many people it should only act on outbound connections to mitigate the risk of accidentally creating a partition.

[DaveF]

@gmaxwell The external script I threw together was quick and dirty.
Will have to figure out how to do it the way you suggested.

But.... https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5382906.msg66205884#msg66205884 .....
So I was doing it the way that used the fewest brain-cells since a lot of mine are offline at the moment.

Perhaps its the pain talking, but I really don't care about anyone running knots anymore. They have been warned and warned and warned again that it's going to end poorly for them. No different then for the people who followed the cult of BSV and all the others off their cliff. Let them crash and leave us alone.

-Dave

[BlackHatCoiner]

I like the idea of bullying Knotzis through information theory lecturing, so you earned those merits there. If memory serves right, Bitcoin Core will use some nodes solely for blocks, not mempool, so you could allow that kind of connection. But, blocking their IP altogether seems funnier, I know.

I recently read that a pull request removing Luke's DNS seed from seed list of Bitcoin Core was approved. The justification is that Luke's DNS fails to return nodes with version later than 28.1.

[DaveF]

Did not know they removed his DNS seed. Good work core people.

IMO no real point in allowing any connections from the IPs that are hosting knots for any reason.
They should be happy I'm blocking them, this way they will not run the risk of accidentally getting a dick pick or something from one of my nodes by accident.

Just think if everyone blocked knots it would get them what they want, the only things in their mempool would be things they think are worth it.
No more having to censor transactions since only they will be transacting there.

-Dave

[gmaxwell]

I like the idea of bullying Knotzis through information theory lecturing, so you earned those merits there. If memory serves right, Bitcoin Core will use some nodes solely for blocks, not mempool, so you could allow that kind of connection. But, blocking their IP altogether seems funnier, I know.

It would would be easy to limit the blocking to blocksonly (fRelay==false) connections--  though arguably they're also less useful for block propagation because they're missing more transactions, so they'll relay blocks slower and also request more transactions from you when you relay blocks to them.

Allowing the blocksonly connections also addresses the concern I raised about partitioning, though so it would be a more reasonable choice if many people were to do it.