Using SOCKS5 proxy to connect to calendar servers but not Bitcoin node?

[kristapsk]

Currently it looks to me when --socks5-proxy is specified, it is used both to connect to calendar servers and Bitcoin node. Might be useful to be able to use proxy for calendar servers, but not Bitcoin node. Either by being able to specify different settings here or (which might be simpler) to just skip proxy when connecting to localhost and / or LAN. See discussion at raspibolt/raspibolt#1087 for context.

[petertodd]

Interesting point.

Is there any circumstance where a proxy for the Bitcoin Node makes sense? I personally never use proxies. But I'd be interested in hearing from others.

[kristapsk]

Is there any circumstance where a proxy for the Bitcoin Node makes sense? I personally never use proxies.

Neither do I, but have seen other people doing that. For example, when travelling and wanting to connect to your Bitcoin node at home via Tor v3 onion from your laptop. Or when you run some site accepting Bitcoin payments on a VPS, where running bitcoind would be expensive, so you configure it to connect to your node at home.

[petertodd]

Seems like a reasonable enough use-case.

Unfortunately implementing this is going to require quite a bit of refactoring. The way socks5 support is implemented right now is by monkey-patching the the low-level socksocket and create_connection functions:

opentimestamps-client/otsclient/args.py

Line 121 in a2121ea

# Monkey patch socket to use SOCKS5 proxy

The code that actually creates the HTTP connection - what we are monkeypatching - is three libraries deep: python-bitcoinlib -> httplib -> socket

So I'd need to figure out the best way to re-architect these libraries to integrate proxy support in a more modular way.