NETWORK.md

The Arweave Network

This (draft!) document aims to provide a breif overview of the key design points of the Arweave network.

Summary

Every node in the Arweave network runs a HTTP server, which exposes an interface to a miner (which does not have to be active).

Inside a node, a gossip-based message passing network between Arweave ADT app and mining nodes is employed.

HTTP Interface

The Arweave HTTP interface exposes the following endpoints:

	GET /block/hash/[hash_id]
	GET /block/height/[height]
	POST /block
	POST /api/tx

JSON structures are employed in the bodies of the HTTP requests to represent blocks and transactions in POST requests. Similarly, GET requests return their objects in a JSON encoded format. The JSON object encodings follow the field names (etc.) described in src/ar.hrl.

Gossipping

Arweave is essentially a gossip network, in which nodes repeat valid messages that they have received to their peers.

Nodes maintain a list of hashes of the messages they have received, not forwarding those that have already been sent once.