A bit drunk here, so apologies in advance if I say something stupid.

he thinks it wouldn't work due to private/public funding inefficiencies

Well, if memory serves he was against ASICMiner. And thank god that project succeeded.

Of course he had some reasons. A common problem with engineers is fixation on a random point, and focusing on certain uncertainties while ignoring others to justify the fixation. However the big picture is messy, as evident in this diverging thread.

It is senseless given people now, currently, rely on Bitcoin not randomly and unpredictably leaking IP information.

Are you sure about this?

I just ran a clean bitcoind with --onlynet=onion and it seems to not only make requests to static clearnet addresses, it also makes clear DNS requests. Check it out yourself.

Obviously tor nodes should be better protected, but there is nothing "chilling" about any of this regardless. It is always a good idea to prevent programs from accessing clearnet if you don't want to leak stuff. Just a few iptables rules should suffice.

attackers in question got normal people to pay for them, and provided a venue in which at least a few people spun up piles of them for the express purpose of sybil'ing

I don't understand what you mean by "express purpose", as Classic nodes are still proper nodes.

Also, the numbers we are talking about are pocket change. Even Bitcoin's own mining power costs many orders of magnitude more.

I can personally spin up more nodes than the entire network right now and support it for 10 years. So I humbly think you are again fixating in the wrong direction.

In effect, a single person was spinning up hundreds of nodes that were under his own direct control. That's similar to just a single verification entity doing one bigger node.

This is true. But we have discussed these years ago.

While having people run nodes they have physical control over is ideal, it is not enough to counter real threats in the real world, where individual entities can run thousands of nodes on a whim and jurisdictions can deny access to a large segment instantly with a single word out of a bureaucrat.

The solution is having plenty of powerful but politically conflicting parties.

Sorry for adding a parallel point here, but this is similar to the problem we have with mining now. Plenty of mining power, all concentrated in the same region. Literally a single bureaucrat can ruin Bitcoin. Competition and political heterogeneity is essential for Bitcoin's survival.

mass-availability ASIC seems to have his support

I am sure. As I said, I'm not a cynic, and my above "criticism" shouldn't be perceived as shit-slinging. I just expect you to do the same for other people who have developed for Bitcoin.

(To be continued.)