1.20.1 Server ran locally wont boot after blocking a certain IP address

[WannabeGuru]

So I am running a server locally and I had an IP address from Lithuania try to log into my server, I quickly blocked the IP and when i went to go reboot the server I got this error 

[22:07:34] [Server thread/ERROR] [minecraft/MinecraftServer]: Encountered an unexpected exception com.google.gson.JsonSyntaxException: Expected entry to be a JsonObject, was "141...60"

 

the beginning and end of that IP is the Lithuania address, and I even spun up new servers and different server versions with all blocking that IP and it does not boot at all. There should be no reason why Java is calling out to that address and I was curious if anyone else has run into this issue. 

 

I got the forge server installer from this website, it is the 1.20.1.jar file. 

 

Any info would be awesome!

 

Thanks

[LexManos]

You can use websites like https://jsonlint.com/ to validate the format of json files.

You added the IP address to the json file incorrectly. Use the in-game commands to ban the IP address instead of manually editing the json.