SHERPA

Decentralized peer discovery using public web beacons. No central bootstrap servers required.

Overview

SHERPA is YAKMESH's novel peer discovery mechanism that leverages the public web layer to bootstrap mesh connections. Instead of relying on hardcoded bootstrap servers, SHERPA treats every YAKMESH node's public endpoint as a potential discovery beacon.

How It Works

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│              Public Web Layer                   │
│   (HTTPS, /.well-known/yakmesh/beacon)          │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│              SHERPA Discovery                   │
│   - Scan known domains/endpoints                │
│   - Verify beacon signatures (ML-DSA-65)        │
│   - Build scored peer list                      │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│              Mesh Core                          │
│   (WebSocket P2P connections)                   │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Beacon Endpoint

Every YAKMESH node automatically exposes a beacon at:

GET /.well-known/yakmesh/beacon

Beacon Response

{
  "version": "1.0",
  "nodeId": "abc123...",
  "networkName": "yakmesh-mainnet",
  "timestamp": 1737200000000,
  "ttl": 3600,
  "capabilities": {
    "wsPort": 9001,
    "httpPort": 443,
    "supportsAnnex": true,
    "supportsNakpak": true,
    "supportsGossip": true
  },
  "peers": [
    {
      "nodeId": "def456...",
      "endpoint": "https://peer1.example.com",
      "wsEndpoint": "wss://peer1.example.com:9001",
      "lastSeen": 1737199000000
    }
  ],
  "publicKey": "ML-DSA-65 public key (hex)",
  "signature": "beacon signature (hex)"
}

Configuration

// yakmesh.config.js
export default {
  sherpa: {
    // Your node's public HTTPS endpoint
    selfEndpoint: 'https://mynode.example.com',
    
    // Your node's WebSocket endpoint
    wsEndpoint: 'wss://mynode.example.com:9001',
    
    // Seed endpoints to start discovery
    seedEndpoints: [
      'https://peerquanta.com',
      'https://yakmesh.dev'
    ],
    
    // Discovery settings
    crawlInterval: 300000,  // 5 minutes
    maxPeers: 1000,
  }
};

Peer Scoring

SHERPA maintains a scored registry of known peers:

Security

• • Signed Beacons - All beacons are signed with ML-DSA-65
• • Network Filtering - Only accept peers from same network
• • Rate Limiting - Max 10 crawls per minute
• • Size Limits - Max beacon size 64KB
• • Timeout Protection - 5 second fetch timeout
• • YPC-27 Checksums - Peer discovery messages include quantum-hard checksums. Learn more →

Etymology

API

// Access SHERPA from your node
const sherpa = node.sherpa;

// Add a seed endpoint
sherpa.addSeed('https://example.com');

// Start discovery
sherpa.start();

// Get discovered peers
const peers = sherpa.registry.getBestPeers(10);

// Listen for new peers
sherpa.on('peer:discovered', (peer) => {
  console.log('Found peer:', peer.nodeId);
});

// Get stats
console.log(sherpa.stats);
// { crawlsCompleted: 5, peersDiscovered: 23, ... }