Stats on orphanage overflows

The recent statistics reveal a surprising trend of over 10 million removals across all nodes on September 14, 2024. A closer examination of the data from the node named Alice on that particular day uncovers an alarming rate of orphan removals, sometimes exceeding 100,000 per minute. This unusual activity suggests a potential flood of orphans, indicating that an entity might be deliberately overwhelming the system with these transactions.

Further analysis of the activities on node Alice reveals that approximately 200,000 unique transaction IDs were requested on the same day, labeled as Requesting tx. Interestingly, these transactions appear to have been re-requested multiple times, pointing towards a systemic issue where the node fails to remember the orphans after their initial request. This repetitive behavior underscores a critical inefficiency within the current operational framework of the node.

In light of these findings, there's a compelling case for enhancing the system's capacity and implementing measures to prevent any single peer from excessively generating orphans. A specific proposal aimed at addressing these concerns is already in consideration, as detailed in the proposed changes to the Bitcoin repository (GitHub Proposal). This proposal represents a proactive step towards mitigating the identified issues and fortifying the network against similar challenges in the future.