Networking

Pearl has no central server. Its ledger lives on a crowd of computers, nodes, each connected to a handful of others, its peers. A new block or transaction spreads like news in a village: each node checks it, then tells its neighbors.

This group is about that conversation: how a node finds peers, what it says to them, how the conversation is encrypted, and how lighter software follows along. Most of it is inherited from btcd, the Bitcoin node Pearl’s code grew from. The parts that changed all trace back to two facts: Pearl’s blocks carry a ~60 KB certificate, and Pearl encrypts everything.

Try it

The network’s live vital signs: tip height, difficulty, block pace and mining rate.

Pearl, right now

Snapshot from Oct 20, 2026 · asking PRLScan…

Block height: 130,827
Difficulty: 40.16M
Avg block time · 144: 174.3s
Network rate: 64.9EMAC/s

Time between the last 20 blocks — 194 s target

Loading recent blocks…

Blocks arrive at random: gaps of a few seconds and of ten minutes are both normal. The average is what difficulty steers toward 194 s.

Network rate counts multiply-accumulates per second, not hashes PRLScan · refreshes every minute while visible

What happens when a node joins?

Find peers

Ask the three DNS seeds (reef., tide. and stream.seeder.pearlnetwork.net) for addresses of healthy nodes. See peers and seeds.
Connect

Open a TCP connection to port 44108. See magic bytes and ports.
Encrypt

Run the BIP-324 handshake. From here on, every byte is encrypted. See encrypted transport.
Say hello

Swap version and verack messages: protocol version 2, services, user agent. See messages.
Catch up

Download headers with their certificates, 100 at a time, verifying every certificate, then the blocks themselves.
Stay in sync

Hear about new blocks and transactions, check them, and pass them on. See nodes.

The network at a glance

P2P port: 44108; RPC 44107 · wallet 44207
Magic: 0x50524C4D "PRLM"; never sent in the clear
Transport: BIP-324 only; no unencrypted fallback
Protocol version: 2; minimum accepted: 2
Headers per message: 100; each with its certificate
User agent: /pearlwire:0.5.0/pearld:1.5.2/; pearld 1.5.2

What’s different from Bitcoin’s network?

Peer-to-peer network
Topic	Bitcoin	Pearl
Encryption	BIP-324 when both sides support it, otherwise plaintext v1	BIP-324 always; no v1 at all
Magic bytes on the wire	f9 be b4 d9 starts every v1 message	Never in the clear; mixed into the key derivation
Ports	8333 (P2P), 8332 (RPC)	44108 (P2P), 44107 (RPC)
Headers message	Up to 2,000 × 81 bytes	Up to 100 × (certificate + 108 bytes)
Header sync	Check each header’s hash against its target	Verify each header’s zero-knowledge certificate
Compact blocks (BIP-152)	Yes	No
Light clients	80 bytes and one hash per header	~60 KB and one proof check per header

Make a guess

A brand-new node syncs Pearl from scratch. Roughly how much certificate data does it download just for the headers up to block 130,827?

Think of your answer first, then check it.

Answer About 7.8 GB.

Each header arrives with its certificate: 108 + 59,768 = 59,876 bytes today. There were 130,827 blocks by 20 October 2026: 130,827 × 59,876 bytes ≈ 7.8 GB, before a single transaction. (Rough arithmetic: early certificates were a few bytes smaller.) The node verifies every one of those proofs as it goes.