That was what was proposed w/ BIP151 in Bitcoin. We also came up with a strongly zero-knowledge authentication system where the connection receiver learns abso

That was what was proposed w/ BIP151 in Bitcoin. We also came up with a strongly zero-knowledge authentication system where the connection receiver learns absolutely nothing about if authentication is being used by the connection initator. This prevents a MITM from adaptively "Opps, looks like that TCP connection failed" when they notice authentication being attempted in order to avoid detection. This idea fits pretty nicely with how we manual connections work in Bitcoin... A normal node will make 8 automatic (random) outgoing connections plus up to another 8 connections to manually specified connections. Our thought was that if a manually specified connection was authenticated for partitioning resistance, and the auth failed it could just get treated as a random connection (and, of course, sound klaxons). The end result should be a phenomenal amount of herd immunity where even a small percentage using authentication should totally stop MITM attacks by attackers who really don't want to get detected.