Skip to content

Networking

Ashen uses Commonware’s P2P networking primitives for validator communication and block dissemination.

The networking layer handles:

  • Consensus Messages - Validator-to-validator BFT protocol messages
  • Block Broadcast - Disseminating finalized blocks
  • Transaction Gossip - Propagating mempool transactions

Communication is organized into channels:

ChannelPurpose
ConsensusSimplex protocol messages
BlocksFinalized block broadcast
TransactionsMempool gossip

Validators maintain authenticated connections:

  • Peer Discovery - Bootstrap from known peers
  • Identity Verification - Ed25519 peer authentication
  • Encrypted Transport - Noise protocol encryption

See Running a Node for network configuration.

Finalized blocks are broadcast to all nodes:

  • Buffered Broadcast - Efficient block propagation
  • Finality Proofs - BLS signatures included for verification
  • Data Availability - Erasure coding for light clients