For nearly 15 years, all communication between nodes on the Bitcoin network was transmitted completely in the clear, without any encryption. That changed in 2024 with the adoption of BIP 324, which introduced the “v2” transport protocol for communication between nodes. This new protocol features opportunistic encryption, making the traffic unreadable to passive adversaries capable of monitoring messages between nodes. Since adding support for it in Bitcoin Core 26.0, and enabling it by default in 27.0, it is now used for the majority of global Bitcoin P2P traffic.

Taking a step back, a Bitcoin node’s primary function is exchanging pieces of information that are fundamentally…

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