Kadcast builds upon the principles of the Kademlia DHT protocol, organizing net-
work nodes in a hierarchical, tree-like structure where each node maintains a routingtable sorted by XOR distance between its node ID and other nodes. This distance
metric ensures that nodes are able to efficiently locate and communicate with other
peers within the network. Routing tables are divided into buckets, which store con-
tact information for peers at various distances. By making use of Kademlia’s XOR
distance, Kadcast ensures that the farther a node is from the sender, the fewer in-
termediate nodes are required to relay the message, reducing message propagation
time.
Kadcast’s primary innovation lies in its broadcast mechanism, which optimizes
the distribution of messages by limiting redundant transmissions. Instead of broad-
casting to all neighboring nodes, each node forwards messages only to selected peers
at increasing XOR distances, creating an efficient cascading effect. This significantly
reduces bandwidth usage compared to traditional flooding or gossip-based P2P net-
works, where each message is broadcast to all neighbors regardless of the distance or
the network structure.
Multicast trees. One of Kadcast’s key features is its use of multicast trees to organize
message dissemination. Multicast groups are formed based on node proximity in the
Kademlia DHT structure. When a node sends a message, it does so through its closest
peers, which in turn propagate the message to their neighbors at increasing XOR
distances. This structured propagation allows for optimal coverage of the network
with minimal overhead, ensuring that each node receives the message with the fewest
possible relays. By structuring message dissemination this way, Kadcast drastically
reduces the overall number of transmissions required to propagate data across the
