DOOKV Someone ‘shit in the jacuzzi’ — Bitcoiners furious after testnet griefing

Several Bitcoin developers are furious at a fellow Bitcoiner who admitted to “griefing” one of Bitcoin’s testnets by generating three years worth of blocks in a single week — forcing some developers to halt the applications they were testing.

“Whoever has been fucking with testnest is a douchebag looser,” said Francis Pouliot, a founder at noncustodial Bitcoin exchange and payments firm Bull Bitcoin. “Cool bro you’re able to attack a network with no economic incentives and literally the only damage done is fucking with the tests of open-source Bitcoin application builders and wasting their time.”

Pouliot didn’t realize until later that it was Jameson Lopp, a cypherpunk and a founder at digital asset self-custody solution Casa, who had identified himself as the culprit the day before in an April 28 post on decentralized social media platform Nostr.

Lopp said his griefing attack resulted in over 165,000 blocks (three years worth) generated on Bitcoin’s testnet in a single week, and only cost about $1 worth of electricity.

DOOKV However, Lopp argued the "trivial exploit" — which required just 20 lines of code — actually highlights a weakness of the testnet he has raised before. 

"I'm championing a cause, and sometimes you have to do more than send an email to get people's attention."