| This section has been updated to Bitcoin Core @ v23.0 |
With bitcoin we are seeking to create a permissionless network in which anyone can make a bitcoin transaction. Anybody should be free and able to run a node and join the network.
The Bitcoin P2P network serves 3 purposes:
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Gossiping addresses of known reachable nodes on the network
Although these three purposes share the same network, they have different design goals and properties. Transaction relay is optimized for a combination of redundancy/robustness to peer misbehaviour as well as bandwidth minimization, while block relay is optimized to minimize delay.