`banlist.dat` was introduced in https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6310, storing nodes that were automatically banned (due to exceeding the misbehavior threshold) and manually banned (through the `setban` RPC).

Automatic bans were removed in https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/19219 and replaced with a discouragement filter. That filter is not saved to disk/persisted over shutdown/startup. The `banlist.dat` therefore now only contains addresses that have been banned through the `setban` rpc.

Since https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/15935, we have a specific file for configuration that is updated through the RPC and persisted over shutdown/startup, namely `settings.json`. We should therefore move the manual ban configuration from `banlist.dat` to `settings.json`. Doing so has a couple of benefits:

- `settings.json` is human readable and easily analyzable by any json parser.
- we wouldn't need to maintain custom [de]serialization code for the `banlist.dat` file.

`banlist.dat` is expected to be fairly small and infrequently updated, so disk space/performance are not huge concerns.
return InitError(strprintf(_("Invalid -proxy address or hostname: '%s'"), proxyArg));
        SetProxy(NET_IPV4, addrProxy);
        SetProxy(NET_IPV6, addrProxy);
        SetProxy(NET_ONION, addrProxy);
        SetNameProxy(addrProxy);
        SetReachable(NET_ONION, true); 
    }
    
    
    
    std::string onionArg = args.GetArg("-onion", "");
    if (onionArg != "") {
        if (onionArg == "0") { 
            SetReachable(NET_ONION, false);
        } else {
            CService onionProxy;
            if (!Lookup(onionArg, onionProxy, 9050, fNameLookup)) {
                return InitError(strprintf(_("Invalid -onion address or hostname: '%s'"), onionArg));
            }
            proxyType addrOnion = proxyType(onionProxy, proxyRandomize);
            if (!addrOnion.IsValid())
                return InitError(strprintf(_("Invalid -onion address or hostname: '%s'"), onionArg));
            SetProxy(NET_ONION, addrOnion);
            SetReachable(NET_ONION, true);
        }
    }
    for (const std::string& strAddr : args.GetArgs("-externalip")) {
        CService addrLocal;
        if (Lookup(strAddr, addrLocal, GetListenPort(), fNameLookup) && addrLocal.IsValid())
            AddLocal(addrLocal, LOCAL_MANUAL);