Bitcoin privacy apps and lightning nodes have been struggling with DDOS issues for most of this year, as TOR, the network used by many of these applications, has been under attack. In response, the team behind the MercuryWallet application decided to make their wallet work with both TOR and I2P, a decentralized network that provides anonymous communication over the internet.

Internet privacy infrastructure

TOR, short for The Onion Router, is an encrypted overlay to the internet comprised of thousands of relays that ensure network traffic is untraceable. On the TOR network, IP addresses are untraceable similar to a VPN.

However, a VPN is traditionally based around a centralized provider meaning there is potential for the centralized entity to be compelled to release the IP addresses of those on the network.

When using TOR, a decentralized group of volunteer nodes provides encryption, making it much harder for anyone to track down the source IP address of a connection. Additionally, Bitcoin privacy apps use the TOR network to obfuscate network activity to improve privacy when interacting with the Bitcoin blockchain.

Throughout 2022 the TOR network has suffered continuous DDOS attacks causing the network to operate way below satisfactory speeds. Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks are persistent attacks on a network from a decentralized cluster of computers pinging a network at a level beyond, or close to, its capacity. The traffic volume causes the network to slow…