The Bitcoin P2P network is fundamental to the strength of Bitcoin itself. However, as it stands we know very little about the peers we connect to. This makes it difficult to have data-driven conversations about making changes to the P2P protocol. Additionally, we connect and disconnect from peers in a naïve fashion, simply because we are lacking in the information we would need to make better decisions.
We need more data.
To remedy this problem, I propose the following extensions to Bitcoin Core's per-peer logging abilities.
- Message Capture