Portal Network

The portal network is a response to two needs. Users should have the ability to:

  • Access Ethereum using peers (not providers) from 'small' computers.
    • An old nice-to-have.
  • Access historical data once "history expiry" upgrade goes live
    • A likely future need.

What is "history expiry"

EIP-4444: Bound Historical Data in Execution Clients is an upgrade that seeks to limit the costs of participating in the network. It does this by allowing the clearing of data older than 1 year.

How the Portal network works

Small users working together

graph TD;
    A & B & C & D & E & F & G & H & I --> id5[complete network data];

The portal network consists of many small nodes that each contribute to the whole. Each node is allocated a specific part of the network to obtain from peers and serve back to the network.

The portal network splits data in to different types (e.g., blocks vs new transactions). Each distinct type is effectively a new network. A portal client such as Trin can be used to operate on each/all of these different sub-protocols.

Dedicated sub-protocols

Users can elect to be part of some sub-networks:

graph TD;
    A & B & C --> id1[(History)]
    D & E & F --> id2[(State)]
    A & G & I --> id4[(Indices)]
    C & E & H --> id3[(Txs)]
    id1[(History)] & id2[(State)] & id3[(Txs)] & id4[(Indices)] --> id5[complete network data];

Peer referrals based on names

Nodes make requests to each other for data. If they don't have the data, they look at their peers and suggest one that is most likely to.

graph LR;
    id1[A requests data] -.-> D & E
    D -.-> F & G
    id1[A requests data] ---> B --->  id2[C has data]
    E -.-> F
    B & G -.-> I

Standard requests

Each node has a name, and only holds data that is similar to that name. Peers can tell who is likely to have what data based on these names.

sequenceDiagram
    Alice-->>Bob: Looking for data 0xabc
    Bob->>Alice: Sorry, but try Charlie (gives address)
    Alice-->>Charlie: Looking for data 0xabc
    Charlie->>Alice: Data 0xabc

Tunable resources

Nodes keep content that is similar to their name. That similarity radius can be made larger to voluntarily hold more data.

graph TD;
    id1[(Alice with big hard drive)]
    id2[(Bob)]
    id4[(Charlie, medium)]

In addition to Trin, several other Portal clients participate in the same network.