TABConf 8 · October 13, 2026

You Can't Fix What You Can't See: Monitoring the Bitcoin Network

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At TABConf 8 I talked about monitoring the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin has no operator, and much of what happens on the network is not visible from the blockchain or from a single node. Monitoring is how we notice when something changes, and keep data to investigate it later.

The talk covered who watches the network (BNOC and the Map of Bitcoin Monitoring), peer-observer and its archiver, which I work on, and what monitoring has already found: a network-wide DoS, a P2P bug that made a pool mine on an old block, LinkingLion, and an address spam flood.

The main point: no single observer sees the whole network, so we need many, in different places and run by different people. Want to help? Start at bnoc.xyz or demo.peer.observer.