Seed Hypermedia’s p2p sync is built around identity, trust, and relevance. Because of that, it is fundamentally different from gossip protocols, even if both operate in distributed, peer-to-peer environments.
1. Gossip spreads widely; Seed sync is narrowly scoped
Gossip protocols disseminate messages across a broad or semi-broad set of peers using mesh fanout and probabilistic forwarding. They don’t know who specifically should receive the message- only that it should spread. This just allows spam to spread.
Seed sync has the opposite goal: replicate resources only to peers with explicit trust or relevance relationships.
No broadcast. No fanout.
2. Seed’s propagation graph is identity-defined
Eligible recipients are known in advance via:
verified ownership of sites
trusted contacts (and therefore peers),
including identity delegation, or
explicit subscriptions.
This is directed, bounded, and user-controlled, not emergent or random.
We should never push content to uninterested or random peers.
3. Seed does not use epidemic convergence
Gossip relies on repeated spreading until high-probability coverage is reached. Seed does not perform:
mesh spreading,
redundant forwarding of blobs, or,
probabilistic delivery across the network.
Our sync should have targeted delivery, not epidemic dissemination.