> I understand the use, when coupled with a yet-to-be-devised identity system, > with Bloom filter features. Yet these features
This is a bit of a strawman, you've selected a single narrow usecase which isn't proposed by the BIP and then argue it is worthless. I agree that example doesn't have much value (and I believe that eventually the BIP37 bloom filters should be removed from the protocol). Without something like BIP151 network participants cannot have privacy for the transactions they originate within the protocol against network observers. Even if, through some extraordinary effort, their own first hop is encrypted, unencrypted later hops would rapidly expose significant information about transaction origins in the network. Without something like BIP151 authenticated links are not possible, so manually curated links (addnode/connect) cannot be counted on to provide protection against partitioning sybils. Along the way BIP151 appears that it will actually make the protocol faster. > Given that the BIP relies on identity This is untrue. The proposal is an ephemerally keyed opportunistic encryption system. The privacy against a network observer does not depend on authentication, much less "identity". And when used with authentication at all it makes interception strongly detectable after the fact. > The BIP does not [...] contemplate the significant problems associated with > key distribution in any identity system Because it does not propose any "identity system" or authorization (also, I object to your apparent characterization of authentication as as an 'identity system'-- do you also call Bitcoin addresses an identity system?). That said, manually maintaining adds nodes to your own and somewhat trusted nodes is a recommend best practice for miners and other high value systems which is rendered much less effective due to a lack of authentication, there is no significant key distribution problem in that case, and I expect the future auth BIP (Jonas had one before, but it was put aside for now to first focus on the link layer encryption) to address that case quite well. _______________________________________________ bitcoin-dev mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
