Analysts at Trail of Bits, a blockchain security company, claim that 21% of the nodes on the Bitcoin network are running an outdated version of the Bitcoin Core client.
Commissioned by the US Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Trail of Bits has prepared a report called “Are Blockchains Decentralized?”, which raises questions about the vulnerability and risks of this technology.
In particular, the company has found that legacy Bitcoin nodes, unencrypted network traffic and mining pools passing through a limited number of ISPs can allow various actors to gain excessive centralized control over the network.
According to the report, Bitcoin’s node subnet is largely responsible for communicating with miners and reaching consensus, and most nodes do not significantly contribute to the “health of the network.”
In addition, analysts claim that 21% of the nodes on the network are using an outdated version of the Bitcoin Core client. According to experts, it is extremely important that all nodes of the distributed ledger (DLT) run on the same latest version of the software, otherwise problems may arise, up to a fork of the blockchain.
The authors of the report also found vulnerabilities in the infrastructure. The report states that Bitcoin protocol traffic is unencrypted, and 60% of network traffic only goes through three ISPs, giving them the ability to arbitrarily degrade and deny service to any node.
Earlier, billionaire Samuel Zell, founder of the investment company Equity Group Investments, said that he had never invested in bitcoin, because without government support, this cryptocurrency is doomed to failure.
