The Distributed Topic Tracker addresses the challenge of enabling iroh-gossip peers to discover each other during initial and continuous bootstrap.

A key property of the system is that it operates from a cold start, requiring no prior knowledge, no custom servers, and no centralized control.

The Mainline approach was developed as a solution to this problem. Detailed specifications of the system are provided in the Protocol and Architecture documents.

Repository: https://github.com/rustonbsd/distributed-topic-tracker

distributed-topic-tracker

Crates.io Docs.rs

Decentralized auto Bootstraping for iroh-gossip topic’s via the mainline Bittorrent DHT.

Quick start

Add dependencies (names subject to final crate publish):

[dependencies]
anyhow = "1"
tokio = "1"
iroh = "*"
iroh-gossip = "*"

distributed-topic-tracker = "0.1.5"

Simple iroh-gossip integration example:

use anyhow::Result;
use iroh::{Endpoint, SecretKey};
use iroh_gossip::net::Gossip;

// Imports from distrubuted-topic-tracker
use distributed_topic_tracker::{AutoDiscoveryGossip, RecordPublisher, TopicId};

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> Result<()> {
    // Generate a new random secret key
    let secret_key = SecretKey::generate(rand::rngs::OsRng);

    // Set up endpoint with discovery enabled
    let endpoint = Endpoint::builder()
        .secret_key(secret_key.clone())
        .discovery_n0()
        .bind()
        .await?;

    // Initialize gossip with auto-discovery
    let gossip = Gossip::builder().spawn(endpoint.clone());

    // Set up protocol router
    let _router = iroh::protocol::Router::builder(endpoint.clone())
        .accept(iroh_gossip::ALPN, gossip.clone())
        .spawn();

    // [Distributed Topic Tracker]
    let topic_id = TopicId::new("my-iroh-gossip-topic".to_string());
    let initial_secret = b"my-initial-secret".to_vec();
    let record_publisher = RecordPublisher::new(
        topic_id.clone(),
        endpoint.node_id(),
        secret_key.secret().clone(),
        None,
        initial_secret,
    );

    // A new field "subscribe_and_join_with_auto_discovery/_no_wait" 
    // is available on iroh_gossip::net::Gossip
    let topic = gossip
        .subscribe_and_join_with_auto_discovery(record_publisher)
        .await?;

    println!("[joined topic]");

    // Do something with the gossip topic
    // (bonus: GossipSender and GossipReceiver are safely clonable)
    let (_gossip_sender, _gossip_receiver) = topic.split().await?;
    
    Ok(())
}

Protocol Info

  • Protocol details (spec): PROTOCOL.md
  • Architecture (illustrative): ARCHITECTURE.md
  • Feedback issue: https://github.com/rustonbsd/distributed-topic-tracker-exp/issues/5

Features

  • Fully decentralized bootstrap for iroh-gossip
  • Ed25519-based signing and hpke shared-secret-based encryption
  • DHT rate limiting (caps per-minute records)
  • Resilient bootstrap with retries and jitter
  • Background publisher with bubble detection and peer merging

Testing

Unit Tests

Run unit tests for core components:

cargo test

End-to-End Tests

Test peer discovery across multiple Docker containers:

# Requires Docker and Docker Compose
./test-e2e.sh

The e2e test verifies that multiple nodes can discover each other through the DHT and successfully join the same gossip topic.

Roadmap

  • Finalize crate name and publish to crates.io
  • Tests and CI
  • Add more examples
  • Optimize configuration settings
  • Major refactor
  • Docs (api)

License

This project is licensed under either of

at your option.

Contributing

  • Try it, then drop feedback: https://github.com/rustonbsd/distributed-topic-tracker-exp/issues/5
  • PRs, issue and success reports welcome.

Unless explicitly stated, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in this project shall be dual-licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.