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Author: Jameson LOPP, co -founder of Casa; Translation: Bit Chain Vision Xiaozou
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It’s time to reset the Bitcoin test network. More specifically, it is “testnet” or “testnet3”.
Why do you say that?Because the basic principles of the test network have been broken.Test coins should be rich and diverse and can be used for free, so that developers can test and test their Bitcoin software without spending money to debug the software or risk the actual value.
· The test network has not been reset for 13 years.
· Block rewards are close to 0, and the difficulty of mining is intensified.
· People have been using it for airdrops and other promised actual values.
· This creates economic demand for TBTC.
· People buy and sell TBTC in many places.
There is a strange thing about the test network, because it has caused us to this step to some extent.
Why do test network mining rewards dry?Because its current block height is 2,811,000, which is equivalent to the main network block height in 2061.Therefore, block rewards are only ~ 0.006 TBTC.how so?原因我在几年前就描述过：
在主网上，比特币每天产生144个区块，也许就几个区块的误差。在测试网上……正如你在下图中看到的那样，波动性更大。Due to some slightly different consensus rules, more than 10,000 blocks will be generated every other time -equivalent to the number of block volumes of several months in a day.
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1,beginning
我第一次对测试网累积价值有所了解是因为多年来我一直以向开发者赠送测试网币而闻名。在Google / Reddit / X上搜索测试币通常会出现我的用户名。Therefore, at the beginning of this year, when I started receiving a test currency request from non -developers, I started in -depth research.It eventually became the “SatoshivM” project, claiming to build a zero -knowledge Rollup on the second floor.
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Satoshivm shows some dangerous signals:
· Their github is a ghost city without activity.
· They have nearly 200,000 fans on X, but as far as I know, no one pays attention or talks about this project.
· Many people complain that airdrops are useless.
I think this is the first large -scale scam I saw on the test network, but this is not the first test network scam.Malicious people use people’s simplicity to sell the test network Bitcoin to them with the main network Bitcoin exchange rate.To put it bluntly, this is why all wallets that support the test network need to issue obvious exemptional statements on the main interface, claiming that the test currency is not worthy!
2, Test Network has accumulated value
Obviously, there will be a lot of mean people who accuse me of writing such an article because I “do not like” their project. What I want to say is:
I advocate the only reason for resetting the test network is that the test network should be used for free for developers.In addition, everyone should be able to use the test network freely to achieve any development purpose they want to achieve.
Here are some evidence of test currency being traded with real value:
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This is a brokerage website that sells token at a price of one dollar.请注意，他们甚至指出因测试币已累积价值，所以获取测试币是有难度的。
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这是另一个运营测试网和主网间代币交易的完整订单簿的网站。
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This is a decentralized exchange running on the test network that can trade various tokens.
3As well asPhase 1: Excavate cheap blocks
It is quite easy to dig a series of difficult blocks.
(1) Trigger the minimum difficulty rule
(2) The laptop computer GPU can create 1 block every 10 seconds
(3) Continue to excavate until the time stamp is too many (2 hours)
（4）等待
(5) Repeat
It was 9 years ago on the test online mining. At that time, I used a cheap second -hand ASIC.This time, I hope to use CPU mining only on the desktop, so I use very old BFGMiner software.
But it turns out that even if the Diffical 1 is difficult, the CPU mining is still too slow, so I have to spend some time to let BFMiner run together with my GPU.
In my bitcoin.conf, I set the Bash script for each newly received block through the following ways:
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The Bash script mainly checks whether the mining machine is running.If it does not run, it will run the mining machine for 60 seconds and then terminate the mining process.
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To prove that it is running effectively, I checked the test network block browser.
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Then we can see a lot of blank blocks like this have been dug out:
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However, after running for almost a whole day, I noticed that I did not dig out so many blank blocks.By viewing the time stamp of other miners’ blocks, I found that they are also adjusting their time stamps in time!This is a bit surprising because I think the miners must perform manual operation.Check the logic of mining templates carefully. If the MEDIAN TIME PAST of the last 6 blocks is in the future of the system clock, it will use Median Time Past + 1 second.This is actually reasonable, because this is a consensus rule. If the timestamp of the block you dig is earlier than “Median Time Past”, it will be considered invalid and rejected by other nodes.
因此，这条规则意味着，通过不断尝试将时间向前推进，我在进行自我对抗，缩小了时间扭曲的有效窗口。So I closed the automatic blank block mining triggered after each block.
But in the few days when I run Phase 1 script, you can see that I successfully increased the number of blocks of the test network by 300%!
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Public response
My non -broken Phase 1 script (it does not actually slow the confirmation of anyone’s transaction) is that it has triggered my attention to some projects. I didn’t even know that these projects were running.I started to receive the Telegram message from the project relevant personnel and asked me what I was doing.Then their project leaders tried to turn themselves into a victim and put forward many ridiculous claims.
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After doing some surveys on this Motoswap project, everything became very clear. It was run by people of BSV.Therefore, seeing that they use a common tribalist narrative to describe their failure as “It’s US Against the Maxis (we are fighting Maxis)”. It is not surprising.For some reason, Danny has always told his supporters that they will switch from the test network to the main network, which will destroy the main network.但这当然是完全不对的：如果他们切换到主网，唯一会发生的事情就是，degen交易员将因价格过高而不愿使用该DEX。
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This guy is so stupid that even his own project’s name is not correct.但是任何关注该领域已有几年的人，都应该清楚地意识到，相信Craig Wright是有信誉的，或者相信BSV是一个好想法，该是多么愚蠢。
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This guy obviously saw the ominous sign, and he might worry that he would not be able to continue to sell test currencies.
The interesting thing about my timestamp operation is that it can also cause all the hash rates to estimate crazy.Mempool.space shows that I have tripled the network hash rate, and increased over 1 Petahash per second. Although I actually only use the GPU of 500 MEGAHASH per second, only a few seconds each time!
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4As well asPhase 2: Permanent block storm
Phase 1, which creates low -difficult blocks, is just a conceptual proof of Phase 2, which has caused more confusion to the network.I noticed for the first time in 2015:
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How do I execute Phase 2?It is actually the same as PHASE 1, but to ensure that these steps are triggered before each difficulty adjustment.What is the result of Phase 2?We can see that under normal circumstances, the test network generates about 150 blocks every day.But when the permanent block storm mode is activated, we can easily produce more than 20,000 blocks every day!
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This is quite crazy, because we are talking about the acceleration of block generation by 150 to 250 times, so the overall data throughput on the blockchain is related to the volume.As you expected, many people who run infrastructure and services on the test network are not ready to expand by more than 100 times …
Public response
Unsurprisingly, the first person who noticed the abnormal test of the network will be those who run token to the token with actual value.
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One day passed, and then …
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I think it is very interesting that this Degen project is trying to transform their infrastructure into positive factor by inviting “destroying the test network”.
In addition, the response of the test net workers below is strange.This really makes me doubt his motivation. You can see from his website’s remarks that he seems to be satisfied with the airdrop and transaction on the test.Of course, he can freely support this view, but I suspect that he will find that the consensus of himself with other developers using test networks has not reached basic consistency.
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This cancellation attempt is a strange view, because my identity as a Bitcoin Core contributor has nothing to do with my manipulation of the test network.I only modified the code running on my own machine.Bitcoin Core has not participated in my action as an organization …
I also noticed that the block storm will destroy Mempool.space infrastructure.Below you can see that their MEMPOOL chart stopped updating after the storm strikes.
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5As well asPhase 3: Before you continue!
At present, I give TestNet for a period of time, so that developers have time to strengthen their infrastructure and/or switching networks.Someone told me that they are turning to Signet. Signet is a test network, which is much lower than the degree of chaos, because block mining is not used by workload.
Please note that so far, everything I do does not need hash rate or electricity.I spent more time (a few hours) for the OpenCL driver to run on my Linux (using my GPU mining), and there is no need to write scripts that trigger block storms.
I will not discuss the details here to avoid destroying surprises, but when you start considering what you can do with relatively small hash rates, the discussion will be very interesting.
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I just want to say that using the test network for any real value transaction is a very bad idea.The test network is not safe. I am very happy to provide proof for those who refuse to believe this.What I want to reiterate is: I don’t care if people use test networks to test the controversial things such as inscriptions/Runes/Ordinals/Exchanges.But if the purpose of these things is to conduct actual value transactions, then you better use Dogecoin or Litecoin.
6, Reset Test Network
Bitcoin Core’s code change will start Testnet4, and several contributors are currently doing related work.
This is a unique job, because it is not every day you create a new creation block.I found that this old tool is still very easy to use.
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So now TestNet4 has a potential new creation block:
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I hope TestNet4 can be completed and available in the next few months.
7,Summarize
I suspect that if a test network continues to run for a long time, the testing of the network will become scarce and may accumulate value.Therefore, the only way to ensure that the test network will not accumulate value is to instill a regular reset culture.
At present, everyone who runs infrastructure on TestNet3, please note: I strongly recommend that you start planning your infrastructure to TestNet4 this summer or autumn.
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