Weeks 11 and 12 Summary

During these two weeks, I had a small holiday break which resulted in less work being accomplished. However, during this time, I explored the principles and applications of libp2p, especially focusing on NAT, unique addressing in libp2p, and the gossip pub/sub among other topics. After going through the official documentation and example codes of libp2p thoroughly, I further explored the p2p module in Optimism as it also utilizes libp2p technology.

Basic Principles and Applications of libp2p

In these two weeks, I learned that libp2p is a modular, plug-and-play network protocol stack, covering a variety of network protocols which help developers build complex, dynamic p2p applications. Below are some of the key points I gathered:

• NAT Traversal: Learned about NAT (Network Address Translation) and how it affects p2p network connectivity. Learned how libp2p manages to establish communication between network nodes through NAT traversal techniques.
• Unique Addressing: libp2p uses a unique addressing scheme that helps nodes to discover and connect to other nodes in the network more efficiently.
• Gossip pub/sub Protocol: Understood the use of the gossip protocol in libp2p, implementing message passing between nodes through a publish/subscribe model.

Exploration of Optimism's p2p Module

With the foundational knowledge of libp2p, I turned my attention to the p2p module in Optimism. Through in-depth analysis, I found that Optimism also uses libp2p technology for communication and data transmission among networks. This gave me a clearer understanding of how to apply libp2p in real projects.

I documented a summary article on the application of libp2p in Optimism and published it on HackMD. The link to the article is as follows: libp2p in Optimism

Conclusion and Looking Forward

Although the holiday period impacted the progress, the exploration into libp2p and Optimism's p2p module has expanded my understanding of p2p networks. Going forward, I plan to continue exploring the advanced features of libp2p and try to implement some p2p applications in my personal projects. Additionally, I discovered a mechanism in Optimism for scoring RPC via scords, which might be very useful for my projects.