Bootstrap / discovery strategy for mithril-relay in production

[leepl37]

Hi 🙏— thanks for publishing mithril project. I’ve been reading the relay README and looking through the code while learning how the signer/aggregator/relay pieces fit together.

Right now, it looks like the relay requires a manually configured peer address via --dial-to, and I wasn’t able to find an explicit peer discovery or bootstrap list strategy documented yet. I wanted to ask about the intended direction.

What I’m seeing in the code

In aggregator.rs, dial_to is configured as an optional Multiaddr:

#[clap(long, env = "DIAL_TO")]
dial_to: Option<Multiaddr>

My question is: what is the intended production bootstrap/discovery strategy for the relay network?

Do you expect this to be:
• static bootstrap peers (DNS multiaddrs)
• libp2p DHT discovery
• infrastructure-based discovery (Kubernetes/Terraform)
• or something else?

Thanks — I’m very interested in learning this part of the design.

[jpraynaud]

Hi @leepl37,

Thanks for asking this question. Actually, there are 2 relays:

• The signer relay that we use to proxy the HTTP traffic from a block producer machine to a relay machine in production (https://mithril.network/doc/manual/operate/run-signer-node#set-up-the-mithril-relay-node), which is a Squid proxy
• The experimental / not for production relay (https://github.com/input-output-hk/mithril/tree/main/mithril-relay) which we use to experiment with decentralization. Under the hood we use libp2p to support the P2P network and its Multiaddr type to provide peer connectivity.

In order to decentralize the Mithril network in production, we have opted for a Decentralized Message Queue or DMQ protocol:

• The protocol is described and specified in the CIP-0137
• We have worked on the implementation of the mini-protocols of the DMQ network:
  • Implementing the DMQ node (https://github.com/IntersectMBO/dmq-node) which leverages Ouroboros network stack to support the P2P diffusion of the messages
  • Implementing the n2c mini-protocols in the Pallas library (https://github.com/txpipe/pallas)
  • Implementing the publication and notification logic in the Mithril nodes (https://github.com/input-output-hk/mithril/tree/main/internal/mithril-dmq)

We are currently in the testing phase of the protocol on pre-release-preview network:

• See our recent announcement on Discord
• A developer blog post we have created: https://mithril.network/doc/dev-blog/2026/01/06/dmq-testing-program