Bitcoin [BTC]’s Gentoo client hijack attempt by infamous developer Luke Jr.

Luke Jr., who used to package the infamous Gentoo client for Bitcoin [BTC], has attempted to hijack it yet again. He was previously responsible for the boycott of the client by the Bitcoin community. The infamous developer on the Bitcoin protocol submitted a request to merge 5 commits to the official Gentoo client.

Luke Jr.’s attempt to take over the client on GitHub | Source: GitHub

The Gentoo Bitcoin client has had a rough history. In October of 2014, the r/Bitcoin community on Reddit called for a boycott of the Gentoo client, citing reasons of certain Bitcoin addresses being blacklisted. Luke Jr., a developer on the project, was accused of forcing the Bitcoin to include it in the address blacklist functionality in the Gentoo patches.

While the Gentoo client allows for users to compile their own client and not accept patches from being enforced in an update, the Bitcoin community still rose up in outrage. They saw this as a violation of the freedom of Bitcoin and the freedom of choice associated with the cryptocurrency.

3 years ago, user kyledrake [Reddit user] explained the problem associated with the blacklist clearly, stating:

“This is a hard-coded blacklist baked into what users are expecting to be an easier way to install a stable release of Bitcoin core. As a result, this package would not faithfully achieve the goal of providing the stable released version of Bitcoin core, as it has been modified for political reasons using the mechanisms designed to fix compile/run issues for that specific distribution.”

The political reasons mentioned here was the blacklisting of Satoshi Dice’s transactions. Satoshi Dice is a blockchain-based betting game that was based on the Bitcoin blockchain at the time of the issue. Many claimed that Luke Jr. was enforcing his religious beliefs on the software that he was packaging, saying that he was doing so due to betting being frowned upon by the Church. However, Luke stated that these were “known DDoS [Distributed Denial of Service] attacks” on the Bitcoin blockchain, hence resulting in them being blacklisted.

Reddit User optionsanarchist stated:

“It’s not a DoS attack (nobody has been denied service that can I tell), and even if I grant that the betting sites are “spamming the blockchain”, Counterparty and Mastercoin are not in the same category. They are not 3rd party entities, they are a protocol which people are voluntarily choosing to use. It seems to me that Luke-Jr has malicious intent.”

The blacklist code blocked a number of features, such as relaying of bare multiple signature transactions and relaying of non-standard transactions. Moreover, changes were made to transaction prioritization, which indirectly affects consensus on the chain. Finally, the code blacklisted transactions with certain properties based on a hardcoded list, which directly affects which transactions can be processed and which can not.

Blacklist code in the client pushed by Luke Jr. | Source: Reddit

The decision of whether to process transactions or not should be directly given to the node, stated the community.

Reddit user sicks3144 stated on this:

“Let’s be clear: as soon as Bitcoin starts deeming some transactions to be spam, it’s worthless. I, and I’m sure many others, will have no interest in a payment system that may at any point decide that my transaction “doesn’t count”. It’s basically a content filter, and we all know how futile but irritating those are. This is such a damaging idea that it brings sabotage to mind.”

While Luke Jr. came out with a subsequent apology for his actions, the community eventually moved on from the Gentoo patch. He stated that he should have implemented a “pre-installation notice” that notified users of the patch and its details. He stated:

“While I still believe the full patch is the best solution for users today (I have been using it for years myself), I recognise that it should not be enabled without ensuring everyone receiving it is well-aware. I will put more effort into ensuring future patches are clearly disclosed upfront.”

Now, more recently, he has attempted to take control over the Gentoo client, with a merge request for five revisions from his own client. In his post on Github, he states that the default was changed due to a “smear campaign by trolls”, going on to call the r/btc community trolls as well, saying that they have begun “harassment” of the pull request. The post by him states:

Luke Jr.’s post on GitHub | Source: GitHub

It is left to see whether this will be a repeat of the events conducted in 2014, although some users have begun to call on other developers to take control of the client. This is seen with GitHub user selutuzup calling on user blueness to take control.

The GitHub  user stated:

“@blueness, I’m sorry to ping you, but I would like to request you to please take full ownership of bitcoin*, as you have stated here. And keep the ebuilds neutral/conservative as possible. Bitcoin Knots should be a separated package.”