rfc/waku-v2.md at 4e70b92f05d6ba6d87bf022c699c1966e74c294c

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title	version	status	authors
Waku	2.0.0-alpha1	Raw	Oskar Thorén <oskar@status.im>

TODO

Abstract

Waku is a privacy-preserving peer-to-peer messaging protocol for resource restricted devices. It implements PubSub in libp2p and adds capabilities on top of it. These capabilities are: (i) retrieving historical messages for mostly-offline devices (ii) adaptive nodes, allowing for heterogenerous nodes to contribute, and (iii) bandwidth preservation for light nodes. This makes it ideal for running a p2p protocol on mobile.

Historically, it has its roots in Waku v1 [xx5], which stems from Whisper [xx6], originally part of the Ethereum stack. However, Waku v2 acts more as a thin wrapper for PubSub and has a different API. It is implemented in an iterative manner where initial focus is on porting essential functionality to libp2p. See here for a rough road map [xx7].

Motivation

TODO

NOTE: Should elaborate on privacy-preserving messaging for resource restricted devices, etc. Also Waku v1 history briefly.

Definitions

TODO

Underlying Transports and Prerequisites

TODO Right now this is more like a set of components

Peer Discovery

WakuSub and PubSub don't provide an peer discovery mechanism. This has to be provided for by the environment.

PubSub interface

Waku v2 is implementing the PubSub interface in Libp2p. See PubSub spec [xx2] for more details.

Protocol Identifier

The current protocol identifier is: /wakusub/0.0.1 [xx1].

TODO Update to 2.0.0-alpha0

FloodSub

WakuSub is currently a subprotocol of FloodSub. Future versions of WakuSub will support GossipSub 1 [xx3] and GossipSub 1.1 [xx4].

Bridge mode

To maintain compatibility with Waku v1, a bridge mode can be achieved. See separate spec.

TODO Detail this in a separate spec

Wire Specification

We are using protobuf RPC messages between peers. Here's what a message looks like, as defined in the PubSub interface.

NOTE: Should contain protobuf definitions that cover essentials of Waku v1. In cases where it doesn't cover, we can defer to siblings/child specs, e.g. such as the data field for encryption, etc.

Messages

message Message {
	optional string from = 1;
	optional bytes data = 2;
	optional bytes seqno = 3;
	repeated string topicIDs = 4;
	optional bytes signature = 5;
	optional bytes key = 6;
}

TODO Detail options and what's in data, additional methods, etc