Key Points
- Bitcoin developer Jameson Lopp is under fire for disrupting Bitcoin’s testnet by generating three years worth of blocks in a week.
- Lopp’s actions have been criticized by other developers, but he argues it highlights a weakness in the testnet that he has previously raised.
Jameson Lopp, a Bitcoin developer and founder at digital asset self-custody solution Casa, has caused uproar in the Bitcoin developer community. He admitted to disrupting one of Bitcoin’s testnets by generating three years worth of blocks in just one week. This action forced some developers to stop their application testing.
Francis Pouliot, a founder at noncustodial Bitcoin exchange and payments firm Bull Bitcoin, was one of the developers who expressed his annoyance. He criticized the individual responsible for the disruption, not realizing at the time that it was Lopp.
Lopp’s Justification
Lopp revealed his actions in a post on decentralized social media platform Nostr. He explained that his attack, which generated over 165,000 blocks (three years worth) on Bitcoin’s testnet in a single week, cost about $1 worth of electricity.
Lopp defended his actions, arguing that the “trivial exploit” — which required just 20 lines of code — actually exposed a weakness of the testnet he has previously pointed out. He stated, “I’m championing a cause, and sometimes you have to do more than send an email to get people’s attention.”
Community Response
However, not everyone agrees with Lopp’s approach. Pouliot, for example, likened Lopp’s actions to someone disrupting a spa just to get people to move to another one. This is likely a reference to a suggestion of moving to a different testnet.
Leo Weese, technical content lead at the Lightning Labs, explained that the attack interrupted node syncing on the Bitcoin testnet. He expressed concern that this could lead to the end of permission-less testing networks.
Despite the criticism, Lopp stated that he wants to see Bitcoin’s testnet reset to fix the “timewarp” weakness and to restore mining rewards earned from the testnet, which he noted is practically zero now.
