lsd0007

commit da057ab95248317969b0fa68bd53070c6d3f4bef
parent 0a57cf768b93005f089beb9f6277e5b0b31e06c8
Author: ch3 <ch3@mailbox.org>
Date:   Thu, 31 Jul 2025 22:37:47 +0200

libp2p: more details on different subsystems

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draft-gnunet-communicators.xml
 | 
37
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1 file changed, 37 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/draft-gnunet-communicators.xml b/draft-gnunet-communicators.xml
@@ -1499,6 +1499,43 @@ content-length: LENGTH OF MESSAGE
       different wrappers and converters have to be implemented before being able
       to use them.
     </t>
+    <t>
+      Gnunet HELLO and libp2p multiaddress: The basic element to connect two
+      gnunet peers via their libp2p communicators would be to exchange their
+      libp2p multiaddress as part of a gnunet HELLO. Both represent a collection
+      of different, underlying protocols, the respective implementations
+      communicate over. Due to the similarity in representation, an adaption is
+      needed to either (a) properly embed the one in the other without parsing
+      issues, or (b) being able to directly parse both.
+      For a better understanding, here is an exemplary libp2p multiaddress:
+      <artwork anchor="libp2p multiaddress" name="" type="" align="left" alt=""><![CDATA[
+/ip4/198.51.100/tcp/1234/p2p/QmYyQSo1c1Ym7orWxLYvCrM2EmxFTANf8wXmmE7DWjhx5N
+      ]]></artwork>
+      ... and an exemplary printable (shortened and obfuscated) representaiton
+      of a gnunet HELLO:
+      <artwork anchor="gnunet HELLO" name="" type="" align="left" alt=""><![CDATA[
+        gnunet://hello/HFXP<...>Y0/WDV0<...>WE20/1754<...>40?udp=%5Bfe80%3A%3Ad284%3A<...>3A2086&udp=%5B2003%3Acb%3A<...>%5D%3A2086<...>&tcp=%5Bfe80%3A%3A<...>%5D%3A2086&tcp=192.168.2.135%3A2086
+      ]]></artwork>
+      For the specification of libp2p multiaddresses see https://github.com/libp2p/specs/tree/master/addressing
+    </t>
+    <t>
+      Peer IDs: While gnunet only uses a single cryptographic primitive (EdDSA
+      curve Ed25519) keys, libp2p has the option of using different keys. While
+      not necessary if the connection is only as a communicator below transport,
+      there might be the possibility of a direct compatibility at this level.
+      (Probably a conversion in encoding/representation has still to be done.)
+      The difference being that libp2p peer ids are stable, gnunet peer ids can
+      change.
+      For more see the libp2p spec on peer-ids:
+      https://github.com/libp2p/specs/blob/master/peer-ids/peer-ids.md
+    </t>
+    <t>
+      DHT: The Distributed Hash Tables of both networks are a bit different and
+      as such not directly compatible. libp2p implements Kademlia
+      (https://github.com/libp2p/specs/tree/master/kad-dht), whereas
+      gnunet implements R5N
+      (https://docs.gnunet.org/latest/users/subsystems.html#dht-distributed-hash-table).
+    </t>
   </section>
    <section anchor="security" numbered="true" toc="default">
    <name>Security and Privacy Considerations</name>