Remove unreliable seed from chainparams.cpp, and the associated README
What the developer wrote
Authored by SatsAndSports
Remove unreliable seed from chainparams.cpp, and the associated README
What changed, and why it matters
This commit removes one of several built-in DNS seed sources used by Bitcoin Core to help new nodes find peers on the network. The change is described as removing an 'unreliable seed.' DNS seeds are trusted to return a list of honest Bitcoin nodes, so removing a seed that is not reliably maintained reduces the chance that a stale or misconfigured seed could misdirect new nodes. It is a routine network-health cleanup, not a fix for a confirmed attack or vulnerability.
Treat as a low-risk maintenance change. Operators and downstream packagers should review whether any local seed lists or build scripts still reference the removed seed, and consider monitoring bootstrap reliability for users in regions where the remaining seeds are less reachable. No emergency deployment is warranted based on this diff alone.
Security signals we found
Removal of a trusted bootstrap DNS seed from chainparams.cpp
Change framed by the commit author as 'unreliable seed' rather than compromised or malicious
No cryptographic, consensus, or P2P protocol change in the diff
No CVE, advisory, or vendor security statement is present in the supplied materials
Evidence from the diff
The patch removes Luke Dashjr’s DNS seed (dnsseed.bitcoin.dashjr-list-of-p2p-nodes.us.) from src/kernel/chainparams.cpp and drops the corresponding curl command from contrib/seeds/README.md. Bitcoin Core ships with a hard-coded list of DNS seeds operated by long-time contributors; on first startup or when addrman is empty, it queries these seeds to bootstrap peer discovery. Removing an unreliable seed lessens the bootstrap dependency on that operator and their infrastructure. The diff itself does not describe a security incident, compromise, or exploit; it only states the seed is ‘unreliable.’
Changed components
src/kernel/chainparams.cppcontrib/seeds/README.mdBitcoin Core DNS seed bootstrap listInspect captured patch +1 / −3
diff --git a/contrib/seeds/README.md b/contrib/seeds/README.md
index 63a51b5a..2eb68467 100644
--- a/contrib/seeds/README.md
+++ b/contrib/seeds/README.md
@@ -10,14 +10,13 @@ to addrman with).
Update `MIN_BLOCKS` in `makeseeds.py` and the `-m`/`--minblocks` arguments below, as needed.
-The seeds compiled into the release are created from sipa's, achow101's and luke-jr's
+The seeds compiled into the release are created from sipa's and achow101's
DNS seed, virtu's crawler, and asmap community AS map data. Run the following commands
from the `/contrib/seeds` directory:
```
curl https://bitcoin.sipa.be/seeds.txt.gz | gzip -dc > seeds_main.txt
curl https://21.ninja/seeds.txt.gz | gzip -dc >> seeds_main.txt
-curl https://luke.dashjr.org/programs/bitcoin/files/charts/seeds.txt >> seeds_main.txt
curl https://mainnet.achownodes.xyz/seeds.txt.gz | gzip -dc >> seeds_main.txt
curl https://signet.achownodes.xyz/seeds.txt.gz | gzip -dc > seeds_signet.txt
curl https://testnet.achownodes.xyz/seeds.txt.gz | gzip -dc > seeds_test.txt
diff --git a/src/kernel/chainparams.cpp b/src/kernel/chainparams.cpp
index 062f91af..50891a8d 100644
--- a/src/kernel/chainparams.cpp
+++ b/src/kernel/chainparams.cpp
@@ -147,7 +147,6 @@ public:
// release ASAP to avoid it where possible.
vSeeds.emplace_back("seed.bitcoin.sipa.be."); // Pieter Wuille, only supports x1, x5, x9, and xd
vSeeds.emplace_back("dnsseed.bluematt.me."); // Matt Corallo, only supports x9
- vSeeds.emplace_back("dnsseed.bitcoin.dashjr-list-of-p2p-nodes.us."); // Luke Dashjr
vSeeds.emplace_back("seed.bitcoin.jonasschnelli.ch."); // Jonas Schnelli, only supports x1, x5, x9, and xd
vSeeds.emplace_back("seed.btc.petertodd.net."); // Peter Todd, only supports x1, x5, x9, and xd
vSeeds.emplace_back("seed.bitcoin.sprovoost.nl."); // Sjors Provoost
Why this scored 16/100
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