A verifiable communication layer for the Cardano ecosystem
A Cardano-anchored publish/subscribe layer for authenticated ecosystem communication: signed messages, on-chain publication permissions and deposit-backed node membership.
Critical communication needs authenticated messages and resilient delivery
Node builder to operator
Node builders such as IOG, Amaru and the Cardano Foundation reach node operators with authenticated emergency and operational alerts.
SPO to delegator
Signed pool changes, incidents and fee updates for delegators. Applications must establish which topic and publisher keys belong to the intended pool.
dRep to delegator
dReps communicate voting intent and rationale to the delegators they represent under CIP-1694.
dApp to user
Signed application alerts on topics with on-chain publication permissions. Applications handle per-user delivery; publication-rate limits remain open.
Have a use case we have missed?
Tell us who needs to reach whom, and what stands in the way today. It opens a discussion on GitHub, where anyone can read it, add to it, or back it.
From proposed design to evidence-based architecture
SecureCyclon published
Antonov & Voulgaris publish SecureCyclon at ICDCS 2023: a peer-sampling protocol with defences against protocol-violating peers, proposed as the decentralised foundation the PubSub workstream would build on.
Exploratory research
Use-case and requirements analysis, cryptographic key-material study, and formal plus empirical analysis of the proposed peer-sampling foundation. The analysis surfaced silent attack vectors, where adversaries can bias nodes' views of the network without triggering any of the protocol's defences. That led to the sampling layer being set aside in favour of an on-chain, list-based design.
Dissemination models & simulation
Five candidate dissemination models, from simple push to hybrid designs, analysed and compared against a silent Byzantine adversary. A Rust prototype implements topics, subscriptions and publishing, backed by a deterministic simulation framework for controlled experiments.
M4 selected for dissemination
The team selected M4 within the evaluated family: one set of bidirectional links serves both publishing and relaying. The decision builds on the measured trade-offs in traffic, logical links and resilience. M3 remains the documented bandwidth alternative.
CIP published
The Cardano Improvement Proposal is published in the project repository with its specification, supporting evidence and design comparison. It sets out M4's eligibility and admission rules, the limits of the evidence, and the requirements for activation.
CIP review
Collect feedback from the team and ecosystem reviewers, check the specification and supporting evidence, and resolve the open design questions. Publish revisions as the review progresses through October.
CIP approval
Target approval of the proposal following review, with agreement on its architecture, supporting evidence and remaining implementation work. Review outcomes will determine the timing and priorities for the next stage.
Protocol completion & validation
Complete the gate, beacon, handshake, epoch and recovery rules, together with the on-chain schemas. Publish and validate the deployment profile, including small topics, rotation and real transport behaviour. The implementation plan then calls for interoperating implementations and conformance tests before an operator pilot.
Five candidate models, one bar
Contributions over the last 6 months
Research logbook
The running record of decisions, experiments, and milestones as they happen.
Read more
The latest R&D progress deck: findings from the exploratory phase and the plan for the empirically-driven architecture.
July 2026 Source repositoryThe Rust prototype node, simulation framework, formal specifications, and analysis reports.
GitHub Cardano Improvement ProposalThe protocol specified, and the evidence behind it: what was measured, what the guarantees cost, and where they stop.
Read the CIP