I'm not sure if this will improve privacy. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the relay receiving an event with type 28333 know that it is a bitcoin transaction, and can correlate the bitcoin transaction with the IP from which it was sent from? How is this an upgrade to someone running their own node over Tor and broadcasting transactions through their own node?
I guess broadcasting through nostr is better than using public nodes (assuming the relays aren't run by chain surveillance firms)? But isn't broadcasting through your own node still the most private way to use bitcoin?
Someone please shed some light on my confused newbie mind.
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Broadcasting through your own node can actually be considered a bad practice. The best way to broadcast a transaction is to connect to a node over tor and then disconnect. Using your own node is suboptimal because people can then link your transaction to your node's ip address. https://b10c.me/observations/06-linkinglion/
This is supposed to be the next best thing. You can broadcast your transaction through a 3rd party with much less of a chance to leak your IP because you're going through a relay.
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What if my node is Tor only? Or if it's behind a VPN? (Yes the VPN service provider can see my traffic and IP, but chain surveillance firms cannot.) As long as I don't run my node through clearnet, my IP should be private, no?
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Yes tor is the ideal. But my phone wallet likely isn't running tor and a lot of the time just can't. This provides an alternate solution
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Thanks for the link! This is some form of an eclipse attack, right?
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No eclipse attacks are more so taking up all the connection slots on a bitcoin node so they can't get an accurate view of the network.
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See, the social media and blog thing seemed pretty boring. But then the marketplaces came up, now this... I might have to actually start reading nostr docks and building something. Add it to the list I suppose.
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Jump in! The bar to get something working on nostr is SUPER low. even if you don't use any nostr-specific libs, if you can hack something up to read-write messages to a websocket endpoint, and can do some json wrangling, you can write nostr software
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Sounds cool! I'll probably mess around with some already written libs and then write one in an obscure language just for kicks.
Probably has to wait until after I finish up my LN node though 😅
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The utility of this NIP Its not obvious to me. I'm probably missing something. Scanned the NIP and I don't see it. Someone please enlighten me :).
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503 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 27 Apr 2023
It's mentioned in the "Uses" section, no?

Uses

This offers a way for users to broadcast bitcoin transactions in a private way without having to connect to the bitcoin network directly.
Today, users have to connect to the bitcoin network directly or use an api like mempool.space to broadcast transactions. This is not private, as you can leak your ip address to the service or a bitcoin node.
Nostr provides a better opportunity for users to broadcast transactions in a private way. Nostr relays are at most bitcoin adjacent and have a much lower risk of being run by a chain analysis company, thus providing a possibly better way to broadcast transactions.
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Thanks. I needed to look at the diff... duh.
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Thanks for answering @benthecarman!
I totally forgot about segwit. I am still learning a lot haha
Will try to reproduce that txid
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lol, that's oof glad you figured it out. Have fun, please don't burn any sats
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126 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 27 Apr 2023
What do you mean? I just tried to verify the base64 encoded transaction. I can't burn any sats doing this since those aren't my sats to begin with haha
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Oh, I thought you were actually trying to broadcast it my mistake
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I like this. I hacked up a bot that pushes bitcoin transactions a few months ago, just for kicks. SUPER not private. I like the idea of using "ephemeral" events and encouraging clients to use single-use keypairs for this.
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