StarkNet P2P Specification

This repo contains and tracks the specification of the P2P protocol for StarkNet nodes.

Starknet P2P Networks

There are three different networks that serve different type of applications:

• Sync - responsible for downloading information about blocks existing in Starknet
• Mempool - responsible for handling transactions pending for insertion to Starknet
• Consensus - responsible for creating and adding new blocks to Starknet via staking

Each network has a separate discovery network. The Kademlia protocol names for those networks are:

• /starknet/<chain_id>/sync/kad/1.0.0
• /starknet/<chain_id>/mempool/kad/1.0.0
• /starknet/<chain_id>/consensus/kad/1.0.0

A node that wants to connect to multiple networks should connect through a different port for each network.

The reasons to split the network by protocols and not have a singular network are:

• Allow adding custom security policies and authentication requirements for each network separately.
• Filter out nodes that don't support the capabilities you need
• Allow modular development of node's code stack by having a node comprised of different implementations for each network.