wormhole/docs/FEDERATION.md

Federation

Federation is a form of decentralization, where content is mirrored across a graph of networks. In context of online networks:

• Centralization is the term for a dedicated, single piece of software that is owned by a specific authority or organization.
• Decentralization means that a service can be hosted by many people, and there can even be several implementations readily available.
• Federation, a form of decentralization, is when many servers communicate with each other and retain the information.

Federation with nodes can be best described as a "side effect," as there isn't truly a defined way on how a server should federate. Wormhole follows a general approach to federation, trying it's best to federate with whatever it can, but only federating within the scope of the content it already knows.

Webfinger - Discovery protocol

Wormhole uses the Webfinger protocol to lookup and discover users under different networks. Webfinger allows for servers to use their own external links and expose their own protocols, which allows Wormhole to discover if a lookup is valid.

Webfinger discovery occurs for Wormhole when:

• A specific account is tagged with a domain attached. (e.g. @user@server.social hello there!)
• The /api/v2/search endpoint is called with specific data.
• Wormhole attempts to get context with an unknown user.

TODO