Cardano Stake Pool P2P Feature Tested Successfully

As we all know, block production became fully decentralized recently when IOHK made the big move putting 100% responsibility of block production into the hands of the community and the network’s 2200 stake pool operators. Now, the next step in decentralization is bringing automated Peer-to-Peer (P2P) functionality into Cardano’s Ecosystem. At the moment Stake Pool Operators must manually choose the other Stake Pools they elect to connect with. If they don’t do it manually, they can use tools like TopologyUpdater which reduce a bit the workload of a stake pool operator. However, there is no live discovery function embedded in Cardano which can do this automatically.

In order for the decentralized Cardano network to run properly, the separate nodes need to discover and communicate with other nodes. This requires all SPOs to maintain their topology maps carefully.  

This will change when the P2P feature launches in the mainnet of Cardano.

In this video, you can see a simulation of how a node from Japan is discovering other nodes from all around the world without the SPO’s needing to create a topology map manually or by using tools like TopologyUpdater. 

With automatic P2P feature, the network itself governs the process of interconnecting with other nodes by next-level automation baked into Cardano itself. Automated Topology streamlines the entire process, producing blocks more efficiently, having now taken the management of manually maintaining topology files off of the shoulders of the SPOs.  

We’re happy to see that [CAFE] was one of the first pools that the node in Japan  connected to. Happy staking everyone!