It’s not 360 that’s protecting DeepSeek, but Bitcoin

Is DeepSeek still usable? When DeepSeek recovered from the DDOS attack that attracted the attention of the entire network, we found Bitcoin in the DeepSeek interface request after the recovery.

Let me tell you slowly.

1. DeepSeek is stuck

DeepSeek is experiencing the largest DDOS attack.

It is rumored that the peak traffic of the attack exceeded 3.2Tbps, which is equivalent to tens of millions of devices "knocking on the door" at the same time per second, causing its newly released R1 large model service to be down for nearly 1 day.

DeepSeek survived. Whose credit is it?

Some people say that it was the older generation of Internet companies, 360 Security Brain, Huawei Cloud's Taishan Control, Alibaba Cloud's computing power scheduling algorithm, Hikvision's public monitoring algorithm, NetEase Games' Leihuo game server cluster, DingTalk's emergency communication pool, Cainiao Network's logistics scheduling algorithm, and Red Hacker Alliance, which jointly carried out multi-level and multi-dimensional traffic cleaning to protect DeepSeek, the younger generation.

Please, I hope you don't believe this kind of cool article logic. Except for Zhou Hongyi who is still tirelessly trying to sue DeepSeek, I think other big companies are confused.

Behind this "digital riot" is actually a microcosm of the cybersecurity attack and defense war - attackers manipulate the "zombie army" to launch a tide of requests, and defenders need to find a way out in the game of computing power and wisdom.

It's really a bit difficult.

But what's interesting is that The key to DeepSeek's breakthrough is not in the cool article, but in Bitcoin.

Second, Ironclad Evidence

At first, I was just curious. After the recovery, DeepSeek started to spin for a long time each time it requested, and the computer's fan started at full speed.From a feeling, this is very similar to the Bitcoin mining we are familiar with.

Until I opened F12 and saw the create_pow_challenge in DeepSeek's request, I realized that DeepSeek was using Bitcoin's PoW mechanism to fight DDOS attacks.

Is it true? Let me ask the DeepSeek students. It is true. Not only is it used, but OpenAI is also using it. So, why Bitcoin? 3. Bitcoin's Enlightenment The essence of DDoS attacks is to flood the target system with massive invalid requests until the target system is overwhelmed and denies service.

Traditional defense methods such as traffic cleaning and IP blocking can alleviate symptoms, but it is difficult to cure the root cause - the cost of attack is low, and the cost of defense is high, just like "using a fire hydrant to fight a flood."

DeepSeek's new strategy draws on Bitcoin's Proof of Work (PoW) mechanism. Simply put, if a user wants to call an AI service, he must first complete a calculation problem (similar to Bitcoin mining), and only those who successfully solve the problem can obtain a "pass." This design requires each request to pay a real computing power cost. If an attacker wants to launch a large-scale attack, the cost will rise exponentially.

What is the logic behind this?

Bitcoin ensures network security through PoW: miners consume computing power in exchange for accounting rights. If an attacker wants to tamper with the data on the chain, he needs to control more than 51% of the computing power of the entire network, and the cost far exceeds the benefits.

DeepSeek migrates this logic to the risk control field - if an attacker wants to forge massive requests, he needs to pay a computing power price equivalent to that of real users, which will be uneconomical for the attacker.

This is great.

Fourth, the other side of the coin

DeepSeek's attempt reveals a trend: the underlying philosophy of blockchain is reshaping network security. PoW's "economic game" thinking provides a new paradigm for fighting distributed attacks - no longer relying solely on technical suppression, but through mechanism design to make attackers "give up actively".

Just as Bitcoin uses decentralization to fight financial monopoly, DeepSeek uses computing power competition to fight traffic torrents. This may be the charm of technology: Seemingly unrelated fields often hide the key to solving problems.

In the end, the essence of security is not to build walls, but to make the cost of destruction higher than the benefits. And this "cross-border cooperation" between DeepSeek and Bitcoin may be the best annotation of this logic.

May you have both DeepSeek and Bitcoin.