Developer Luke Dashjr has calculated that the number of full Bitcoin network nodes exceeded 100,000, but more than half of them are subject to the “inflation” vulnerability CVE-2018-17144.

Vulnerability CVE-2018-17144 was found last fall. Malefactors with its help are able to increase the emission of BTC in excess of the established limit. Also with it, miners can bring down the entire Bitcoin network. Only the latest software versions (starting with Bitcoin Core 0.16.3) are protected from vulnerabilities, but many site owners are slow to upgrade.



Dashjr provided detailed statistics on the use of software by full node owners. According to him, most of the users focused on the version of Bitcoin Core 0.16.1, which is subject to vulnerability.

Also, the Bitcoin developer went through third-party services, including BitNodes and CoinDance, which report that there are only about 10,000 full nodes in the network of the first cryptocurrency. According to him, such services take into account only the “open” sites that are publicly available. But there are other nodes on the network that process transactions, although they are not available to the public. As a rule, they belong to people who do not have a public IP address, or are located behind gateways in corporate networks.

“Economic nodes are those that process transactions — they can be public and not. But taking into account only public nodes is not very correct, because inaccessible public nodes also participate in the life of the network, ” Dashjr said.

Luke Dashjr stressed that his data is based on a four-week history and even takes into account those nodes that are not running around the clock.

“I don’t know why these services provide meaningless information and don’t switch to using the best algorithms that allow a more complete look at the network,” said Dashjr.

Note that in February of this year, Dashjr proposed temporarily reducing the block size in the Bitcoin blockchain to 300 kilobytes to maintain the integrity of the network and increase commissions.

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