SYBILing nodes! 😱 Exploiting IC Network... Community Attention Required!

[Lorimer]

@geeta23

To add to the above, I chose my original user name, but the confirmation email to activate my account didn’t come through until much later. I assumed in the meantime maybe I did something wrong, and created another forum account. Why did I choose Geeta23? I onboarded in 2023 and I think that just made sense to me at the time.

Thanks @geeta23, I noted that @paul23 (who onboarded in 2024) decided to follow the convention set by you and @tina23 (and is also linked to this group in other ways). However at this stage it’s nit-picking on my part.

@GAbassad

For what it’s worth, if we had onboarded these nodes under our individual names we could have actually earned higher rewards due to the way Gen 2 node rewards work.

Thanks @GAbassad, I think this would have been what’s necessary to uphold the node provider ‘independence’ expectation that’s assumed by the IC Target Topology. I’m still not clear on why a distinct business entity needs to map onto a distinct Node Provider entity. However, I guess onboarding half of those nodes under your personal NP and half under @tina23’s would still have been undesirable in other aspects (it wouldn’t fully capture the reality of who has control over those nodes).

I really appreciate your responses. I think the NP-links suggestion that @sat came up with sounds like a promising way of modelling this sort of thing moving forward. @Lerak seems to be doing a great job of pushing this idea forward

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I’d like to try and turn attention to a question that has been asked repetitively, but still an answer has not been provided.

1. Why are some node providers feeling the need to obscure the terms of their node transfers to other Node Providers by getting them to sign a non-disclosure agreement about the terms of the node transfer?
2. How can anyone expect the original NP to be fully relinquishing their claim to those nodes under this sort of circumstance?

Can the community agree that we should be requiring the details of how an NP acquired their nodes? @SvenF seemed to be of this opinion before he left DFINITY. I think this should be considered a high priority item, and node-onboarding-reviewers should start requiring this information. I think it should also be demanded retrospectively for some of the recent onboarded NPs. Does this sound reasonable, or not?

In my opinion it doesn’t matter that this information could be spoofed (it can still be used as evidence in the future, as a means of holding NPs to account in the course of physical and/or paper audits).

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I’d also like to resurface the topic of automatic node shuffling and bring it to peoples attention (as a means of helping to secure the IC as it scales). More critical thought and debate are needed.