Welcome to this discussion thread. Feel free to ask questions or discuss things related to this section.
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Does TOR help protect transactions and or just nodes?
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Re
Sybil Attacks…I run a full Bitcoin node. I can see that I am connected to 8 other nodes and that these nodes are geographically distributed throughout the world and not the ones that are closest to me. So am I right to assume that Bitcoin connects nodes in a random manner so as to eliminate the possibility of a Sybil attack?
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Great question! I’d like to know the answer to this as well.
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Pseudo random, connect to ‘one’ next node in the list of cached addresses, I guess the algorithm designer goal was that what you mention to minimize the risk of not mingle around the anonymous crowd of nodes, but, a big but, where did come from the 1st node and the 1st list of neighbor nodes your node build it from? if by bad luck your 1st connections are part of the Sybil team then your node might be screwed … That’s why node owners don’t trust they nodes, they verify/confirm once in a while with several public explorers that their node looks good and have the ‘right’ blocks in it…
I guess TOR can only help protect your node ‘location’, TOR will hide in the lower layer network addresses the one physical address your node is in. A transaction or a block of transactions does not need any protection since it suppose to be an ‘open’ (public domain knowledge) and all content will be verified by nodes with the ‘current’ valid block-chain and accepted or discarded as invalid.
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RockDave66, YOU ROCK ! For running a full Bitcoin node.
By looking at cme’s comment here, I think he answered my question As well.
My question was that does TOR protect both the transactions and nodes, or does it protect only nodes.
Thank you RockDave66 for your question and thank you cme for your comments, they are always very helpful.
Best regards
Sofia
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This question was answered in on of the Q&A sessions, probably the one after the question was posted. As I recall a new node will connect to up to 8 nodes in terms of uploading data but many more in terms of checking data.
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Hi would increasing the number of decimals used in UTXO’s be an expansion of the existing consensus ruleset and produce a HF should it ever be implemented?
It seems that it still fits within the consensus rules therefore I would assume no? However how are we able to represent the data with further decimals when wallets are building Txs and how are nodes able to validate txs with more decimals if they do not see the extra decimal places if they do not run the update?
The prospects Bitcoin mandating the further divisibility of a single Satoshi! Well, could that not also theoretically extend the miner rewards out to an indefinite point of time and maintain The Halving cadence algorithm and push it out into a vanishing point of time into the future?
I am sorry yet if i continue to wonder (or maybe even wander, if not digress too) but what problem or opportunities could that do something like the Stock to Flow, the Pricing projections of Bitcoin or transaction fees ?
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Hi @StaknSats, hope you are great.
I do not understand quite well your questions, about the halving, there is going to be a moment that the halving will disapear because there are no new bitcoin to produce, so the next blocks will just get rewarded by the transaction fees to append the block.
Carlos Z
From the course study I have received , I understand now the Governments approach to the Bitcoin technology. Over the years the governments around the world have been buying Bitcoin and mining it in a massive scale. This is by far dangerous now knowing what I have learned in this course, and these probable attacks now seem likely to happen in the bitcoin blockchain’s future. The people of the united states have witness this first hand with the NSA and their eavesdropping. Some of these hypothetical weaknesses in the Bitcoin technology will happened, especially because of the hashing power government’s can produce compared to the public’s, including the censorship issues. This is a problem that should further examined, but really no solution in sight, for all will be made to accept its outcome like the current Fiat system. 
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I had a similar thought related to the hash power a large government could have if it decided to mess with the cryptocurrency networks in a proof of work model. I guess the same could hold true in a proof of stake model, but it is something i hope to get some more feedback on.
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I am interested in TOR, but afraid of governmentconsequences. I don’t have enough knowledge to install it on my pc without future problems with hackers, governement etc. How can I find help? Who can you trust?
Given the NSA leaked all the best hacking tools to the worst, wild and weird, you’re merely exercising due diligence in protection of your own personal assets against attacks by hackers that are likely to become more frequent and common than we’d think, even if governments want to blame others, we’ll never know, so better to be safe than sorry, no matter the eyes that pry.
I’m no expert, far from it, but perhaps start by downloading the Brave browser, as it appears to be setup to work well with TOR, thus you might find good tutorials there, by trusted experts.
Perhaps also look at a VPN provider, maybe through your anti-virus software they might provide a service, to add another layer of protection.
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Here’s my random thought on TOR:
So some people suggest using TOR with a VPN as an extra layer of security, but my concern is…Tor is somewhat secure from what I’ve researched and read about, but it can still be cracked, as i read on it…in an article that i came upon to. It was an interesting article, which confuses me more about TOR’s online anonymity.
Article states that Tor developers are closely working with the US government to crack its vulnerabilities and can be helped to de-anonymize TOR TLS encryption and its users, so does this mean TOR has been compromise and should still be used?
This was brought up to my attention because of this article, If you like to read about it here is the link:
No questions, good to be here as always.