TON DHT

The TON DHT is a distributed hash table used to discover peers and signed network values. It is required for autonomous network discovery beyond static global configs.

Core Concepts

• DHT node id: public key based identity.
• Address list: peer UDP/TCP addresses with version and expiration.
• Key description: describes what value is stored.
• Value: bytes with TTL and signature.
• K-bucket-like peer lookup behavior.
• Reverse ping: helps validate reachability.

Data Integrity

DHT values are signed. Implementation must verify:

• public key matches node id,
• signature covers the exact TL object required by the schema,
• TTL has not expired,
• address list version is current enough.

Discovery Flow

Typical lookup:

1. Start from static DHT nodes from global config.
2. Query closest known peers for a key.
3. Validate returned nodes.
4. Continue until enough close peers or value is found.
5. Cache valid peers with expiration.

Crate Mapping

No DHT implementation exists yet. Future modules should live under src/dht or src/network/dht and depend on ADNL UDP.

Required Tests

• DHT node signature verification.
• Value signature verification.
• Expired value rejection.
• Closest-peer selection.
• Lookup convergence in simulated network.