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Security

We approach security from the point of view of the DHT's Keyspace Density.

The following plots examine the peer distribution within the keyspace, aiding in the identification of potential Sybil and eclipse attacks.

Keyspace Density

Every object indexed by discv5 requires a binary identifier. In the discv5 implementation, peers are identified by their NodeID (extracted from their ENR) which is the `keccak256` hash of its uncompressed `secp256k1` public key. This identifier determines the location of an object within the XOR keyspace.

Keyspace Regions Population

The plot shows how many peers are included in a particular region of the keyspace. Too many peers within one region indicate a potential issue.

Keyspace Density Distribution

The plot shows the distribution of the PeerIDs across the Poisson curve. Too many PeerIDs outside the curve indicate a potential issue.

Stale Node Records

These plots depict the count of node records stored within each node’s routing table and made accessible through the discv5 DHT. These node records serve as a mechanism through which nodes discover new remote nodes in the network.

Stale Records - Mainnet

Reachable vs Unreachable DHT Records Over Time

Stale Records - all discv5

Reachable vs Unreachable DHT Records Over Time