@harmoniclabs/ouroboros-miniprotocols-ts

What is this? Where am I?

In this repository you'll find a typescript implementation of the ouroboros networking protocol.

To be precise here you find:

• the data-types with respective CBOR encoding/decoding functions (toCbor methods and fromCbor static methods)
• all needed for the multiplexer (the Multiplexer class and the more low level wrapMultiplexerMessage and unwrapMultiplexerMessage)
• some protocol-specific enums (MiniProtcol and handshake versions).

Why isn't it called ouroboros-network-ts?

The ouroboros network component should also take care of connections with peers.

This package doesn't do that.

The reason is very simple: we might want differnt connections types depending on what is establishing the connection.

example; a cardano node typescript implementation would be designed to operate only in a server environment; in that case a TCP socket would be used to connect to other peers, or a UNIX socket for node-to-client protocols (things like cardano-cli or cardano-db-sync);

however, a light node implementation, meant to be able to run in browsers, wouldn't be able to have succ connecitons; the best a browser can offer are WebSockets¹ which are a different type of connection; but the data sent and received is the same.

¹currently not supported by the haskell implementaiton of the cardano-node but still possible in other implementaitons