Paper 2024/1073

Message Latency in Waku Relay with Rate Limiting Nullifiers

Alvaro Revuelta, Waku Research
Sergei Tikhomirov, Waku Research
Aaryamann Challani, Vac Research and Development
Hanno Cornelius, Waku Research
Simon Pierre Vivier, Waku Research
Abstract

Waku is a privacy-preserving, generalized, and decentralized messaging protocol suite. Waku uses GossipSub for message routing and Rate Limiting Nullifiers (RLN) for spam protection. GossipSub ensures fast and reliable peer-to-peer message delivery in a permissionless environment, while RLN enforces a common publishing rate limit using zero-knowledge proofs. This paper presents a practical evaluation of message propagation latency in Waku. First, we estimate latencies analytically, building a simple mathematical model for latency under varying conditions. Second, we run a large-scale single-host simulation with 1000 nodes. Third, we set up a multi-host Waku deployment using five nodes in different locations across the world. Finally, we compare our analytical estimations to the results of the simulation and the real-world measurement. The experimental results are in line with our theoretical model. Under realistic assumptions, medium-sized messages (25 KB) are delivered within 1 second. We conclude that Waku can achieve satisfactory latency for typical use cases, such as decentralized messengers, while providing scalability and anonymity.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Category
Applications
Publication info
Published elsewhere. DLT2024: 6th Distributed Ledger Technologies Workshop
Keywords
GossipSubWakuzkSNARKSRLNanonymitylatencyrate-limiting
Contact author(s)
alrevuelta @ status im
sergei @ status im
aaryamann @ vac dev
hanno @ vac dev
simvivier @ status im
History
2024-07-02: approved
2024-07-01: received
See all versions
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2024/1073
License
Creative Commons Attribution
CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2024/1073,
      author = {Alvaro Revuelta and Sergei Tikhomirov and Aaryamann Challani and Hanno Cornelius and Simon Pierre Vivier},
      title = {Message Latency in Waku Relay with Rate Limiting Nullifiers},
      howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2024/1073},
      year = {2024},
      note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1073}},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1073}
}
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