Networking

Paraloom validators communicate over libp2p: peer discovery via Kademlia DHT, message propagation via gossipsub, and liveness probing via libp2p's ping protocol. Bootstrap multiaddrs are read from the on-chain validator registry, so the network has a verifiable seed.

Discovery

When a validator starts, it registers itself in Kademlia using its on-chain pubkey and multiaddr, then bootstraps its routing table from the registered seed peers:

A Node lifecycle task (see src/node/) drives the bootstrap-refresh loop on start and aborts it on stop.

Liveness

Each validator pings its connected peers using libp2p's built-in ping behaviour. The PeerRegistry state machine consumes swarm events and distinguishes:

• Connected & responsive — recent ping reply
• Slow — high RTT, still responsive
• Offline — missed N consecutive pings (window-configurable)

The slow / offline distinction feeds reputation tracking — a slow peer is not slashed, but a persistently-offline one accrues unavailability evidence.

Gossip

Block proposals, vote messages, and compute job results propagate through gossipsub:

Tightening the codec read budget (issue #69) closed a class of DoS vectors where a malicious peer could send unbounded gossip and exhaust validator memory.

Behaviours composed in ParaloomBehaviour

The libp2p network behaviour aggregates:

• Kademlia — peer discovery
• Ping — liveness probes
• Gossipsub — block / vote / result propagation
• RequestResponse — direct queries (state sync, withdrawal proof requests)

See src/network/mod.rs for the full behaviour composition.

Devnet bootstrap

To join devnet, register on-chain (see Validator guide) and start your node — discovery happens automatically:

$ paraloom validator start --network devnet --config ./validator.toml

  loading network=devnet from on-chain registry
  ✓ kademlia bootstrap: 4 seed peers
  ✓ gossipsub subscribed: paraloom/devnet/blocks
  ✓ ping behaviour active
  ready: listening on /ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/9001

Smoke tests

End-to-end discovery is exercised in tests/network_tests.rs. The full peer-registry / kademlia / ping wiring was completed as part of issue #65.