Gossipsub may not be the best option for Eth 2 - Networking - Ethereum Research


    
    
  
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      Gossipsub may not be the best option for Eth 2
    


      
          
            
              
              
                Networking
              
            
            



      

        

            

            
              
                jamesray1
                
              

              



              
                  
                    February 20, 2019, 11:10pm
                  
                  

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              See https://github.com/w3f/messaging/ for an alternative with Whisper v2.0.

For reference, this is the gossipsub spec.

Pros:

	see the Protocol requirements section of the above, as well as the Motivation



Cons:

	it’s not specified or implemented yet


            


            
              

            

            
                

            
              
                MihailoBjelic
                
              

              



              
                  
                    February 21, 2019,  5:45pm
                  
                  

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              What are the advantages of the alternative (W3F’s) approach?

            


            
              

            

            
                

            
              
                jamesray1
                
              

              



              
                  
                    February 21, 2019, 11:13pm
                  
                  

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              I’ve edited my post with pros and cons and made it a wiki.

            


            
              

            

            
                

            
              
                jamesray1
                
              

              



              
                  
                    March 10, 2019,  5:08am
                  
                  

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              Gossipsub has a different purpose to Whisper v 2.0.

Following is a reply from Jeff Burdges of the Web3 Foundation which cleared up misunderstandings on my part:


We have four unrelated “messaging” projects in the works:

There is gossipsub work for libp2p being handled entirely internally at

Parity. It’s nothing to do with “messaging” in any conventional sense,

just about replacing p2p broadcasts with a more efficient strategy. You

should ask the rust-libp2p developers for more information on this.

In Polkadot, we have an interchain message passing protocol (ICMP) for

polkadot that is 100% about blockchains authenticating blocks, and

nothing to do with normal “messaging”. We also have a more directed

chunk distribution process used in the availability game for polkadot,

where nodes must send very different messages to all other nodes, so

basically the extreme opposite of gossipsup but still all libp2p work.

Finally, the w3f/messaging repo you found exists for cordinating our

work on mix networks. At first blush, mix nets are only for messages

between two individuals, or from an individual to a blockchain, as they

do not obviously support group messaging.

In fact, we do want to support group messaging in the mixnet, but never

via gossip of course. As a rule, gossip protocols are never anonymous

because they cannot provide cryptographic unlinkability.*

We’ve encountered problems with adding important functionality, like

header encryption, to the current best-of-breed group messaging

cryptography like MLS: https://messaginglayersecurity.rocks

We’ll therefore focus on the 1-to-1 case this year, as that presents

enough problems all by itself.



            


            
              

            

            
                
	
        
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