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(Brainstorming) Anonymous validators: possible options at the p2p level #9

@nkeywal

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@nkeywal

Tldr: what can we do at the p2p level if we want the validators (and may be any node actually) to remain anonymous? Is I2P an option?

There are a few reasons to allow the validators to stay anonymous, i.e. hiding the relationship validator public key <-> ip address:
It allows to DoS them, and possibly censor them.
It allows to hack them, and possibly get access to the private key used to sign the message.
It helps to identify the real person behind the validator, hence the public key, hence the funds who were used to stake.

See #5 for more context. It seems reasonable to say that it will being anonymous will be necessary for some validators at least.

Here are the possibility I see (not exclusive):

None of these options are incompatible. It could make sense, for example, to have nodes on the public ip network & nodes on Tor.

At this stage, I’m wondering about I2P support. Anyone has insights on it? On implementing ourselves some parts of Tor/I2P, the devil is in the details, so it’s easy to under-estimate the final cost of these kind of things. But leveraging the work done (or to be done) somewhere else (libp2p? :-) ) could make sense as well.

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