Comparing the Performance of OptimumP2P and Gossipsub
June 12th, 2025

Written by Aayush Rajasekaran & Har Preet
Singh Test environment created by Santiago Paiva & Alejandro Bergasov

TL;DR

  • OptimumP2P is a data propagation library that uses Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC)

  • We ran identical simulations to prior Ethereum research, and observed over 2x faster message arrival times than Gossipsub

  • We also ran experiments on real-world infrastructure, publishing 6 MB messages on a network of 36 nodes using first Gossipsub, and then OptimumP2P

  • OptimumP2P's average latency in these experiments was over 2x better than Gossipsub

  • We also observed that OptimumP2P scaled to larger message sizes (10 MiB and above), while Gossipsub started to fail to deliver messages under these circumstances

  • Improvements to gossip benefit all levels of a blockchain ecosystem; scaling, validator profitability, user experience, and enabling new use cases that need low latency to thrive

Introduction

In peer-to-peer networks, nodes need to disseminate information to each other, a task known as gossip. Gossipsub is a widely-used algorithm to perform gossip in decentralized peer-to-peer networks, such as blockchains. Notably, Gossipsub is used to disseminate new beacon blocks on the Ethereum network.

Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC) is a form of network coding that has been studied in various settings, including gossip in peer-to-peer networks. Encoding messages to be gossiped using RLNC leads to faster propagation time (lower latency), and reduced duplicated transmissions (lower bandwidth usage). Indeed, it has been shown that incorporating RLNC into gossip leads to optimal behavior. OptimumP2P is a new RLNC-based fast data propagation protocol for any blockchain, starting with Ethereum.

We present the results of some simulations and experiments that we have run, comparing Gossipsub and OptimumP2P. The results confirm the theory: OptimumP2P is over twice as fast as Gossipsub, which does not utilize any network coding.

Simulation Construction and Results

We used the Ethereum tool Ethshadow to simulate gossip in an Ethereum-like network. This tool is built on the general-purpose simulation library Shadow. We built off the work of prior Ethereum research, running the same simulations as them with 1,000 nodes, 20% of which have the bandwidth of 1Gbps/1Gbps and 80% of which have 50Mbps/50Mbps. The publisher always has 1Gbps/1Gbps in order to get consistent simulation results. The latencies between pairs of nodes are based on real-world geographic locations.

We first ran a simple experiment, in which a single publisher publishes a single message. We varied message sizes from 128KB to 4096 KB, and observed significantly faster arrival times for all message sizes, as shown below. We remark that our observed performance of Gossipsub matches the results here, which give us confidence in our reproducibility.

Latency in delivery of various sized messages- Gossipsub (left) vs. OptimumP2P (right)
Latency in delivery of various sized messages- Gossipsub (left) vs. OptimumP2P (right)

We then ran simulations in which a single publisher published multiple messages (up to 64), with each message having a size of 128 KB. Once again, we observed notably faster arrival times in all cases.

Latency in delivery with various number of messages- Gossipsub (left) vs. OptimumP2P (right)
Latency in delivery with various number of messages- Gossipsub (left) vs. OptimumP2P (right)

From Simulation to Live Demo

Given the promising results in our simulation, we decided to test things out on real-world infrastructure. Our experiments were run on a cluster of 36 geographically distributed nodes, connected to each other. We compared the result of publishing 6 MB messages, at a rate of 2 messages per second. OptimumP2P achieved an average latency of 1.17 seconds for message delivery, compared to Gossipsub's average latency of 2.35 seconds.

We also varied the message size, from 2 MB to 10 MB. We observed that OptimumP2P scales to larger messages significantly better than Gossipsub, with the performance gap widening as message size increased. We also note that at 10 MB, Gossipsub no longer successfully delivered messages to nodes, while OptimumP2P continued to perform with consistently low latency. This behavior is characteristic of congestion, where delay increases highly non-linearly with load. Watch below as we run two of these tests.

Test Results: Average Latency by Message Size and Algorithm
Test Results: Average Latency by Message Size and Algorithm

We also measured the standard deviations of the latencies, and observed that Gossipsub’s standard deviation was twice as much as in the case of OptimumP2P. This is significant, because it is known from queueing theory that a greater amount of variation leads to overall worse performance for any system.

Test Results: Standard Deviation of Latency by Message Size and Algorithm
Test Results: Standard Deviation of Latency by Message Size and Algorithm

Conclusion

Our results with OptimumP2P confirm what is already well-established in the literature: there are significant performance improvements when Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC) is incorporated into gossip systems. The impact of these improvements is wide-ranging. Protocols like Ethereum can benefit from faster propagation of larger blocks and blobs, allowing them to accommodate increasing demand for blockspace and maintain high performance during periods of network congestion. Individual validators benefit from higher staking APY through more timely proposal and attestation of more profitable blocks, while also seeing lower operational costs from more efficient resource usage. Additional downstream benefits exist at the application and end user levels, which we'll explore in future pieces.

We hope you’re equally excited about the work Optimum is doing! To follow along as testnet progress continues, please follow us here on X and join the community on Discord.

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