Bitcoin Core I2P-Only Node Hosting
Bitcoin Core has native I2P support via the SAM bridge. I2P-only nodes use garlic routing for both inbound and outbound peer connections, providing an alternative to Tor with different threat-model trade-offs. AnubizHost preconfigures I2P-only Bitcoin nodes on NVMe from $140/mo.
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I2P vs Tor for Bitcoin
I2P routes traffic through unidirectional tunnels with packet-level batching (garlic routing), which provides different anonymity properties than Tor's circuit-based onion routing. I2P is generally less popular than Tor for Bitcoin but has a small dedicated user base and has been supported natively in Bitcoin Core since 22.0.
Configuration
We ship i2pd or i2p-router preinstalled with the SAM bridge enabled. bitcoin.conf gets i2psam=127.0.0.1:7656 plus onlynet=i2p. Your node publishes a b32.i2p destination and discovers peers via the I2P-aware seed nodes.
Connectivity Notes
The I2P Bitcoin peer set is smaller than Tor's, but adequate for healthy node operation. You will typically see 4-8 sustained inbound peers and full block propagation. Latency is higher than clearnet but comparable to Tor.
Hybrid With Tor
Bitcoin Core supports running Tor and I2P simultaneously. This is the recommended pattern if you want anonymity-network redundancy. Configure listenonion=1 and i2psam=... together with onlynet=onion,i2p.
Buy
$140/mo. See Tor-only alternative, overview.
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