P2P Protocol Overview

The Ergo network protocol allows full nodes (peers) to collaboratively maintain a peer-to-peer network for block and transaction exchange.

Introduction

The Full Node downloads and verifies every block (and transaction) before it relays them to other nodes.

Significant improvements have been made to the P2P layer over the past few months.

• P2P layer optimizations - part I #1290
• Rust implementation of Ergo peer-to-peer networking
• p2p issues on Ergo Repo

Handshake

Nodes perform handshaking by sending each other handshake messages.

Network Messages

Modifier Exchange

Syncing

Misc

• On mainnet P2P uses port 9030 (9053 for the API)
• For crawling https://libp2p.io/

P2P Smart Contracts

Ergo allows truly P2P smart contracts. Just run the node and a local interface.

• Mixicles - simple private contracts on top of oracle data - Implementation-wise, onchain part would simple, p2p off-chain interaction is needed (and would be the most labour-intensive part likely)
• P2P Pools