⚗️Investigate ways for outsourcing network layer

[D4nte]

We currently implement on our network layer (connection handling and pooling, encryption).

Look at libraries that could alleviate the load in this area.
Consider the following properties:

• encryption
• identification
• NAT

This is a follow-up of #739
Required by #655
Required by #651
Required by #746
Required by #735
Required by #736

[thomaseizinger]

I wasn't sure how to best approach the research so I simply looked through all crates on crates.io that were tagged with network or networking:

• https://crates.io/keywords/networking
• https://crates.io/keywords/network

One thing that came up apart from libp2p which looks interesting is this:

https://github.com/tox-rs/tox

It describes itself as:

a P2P, distributed, encrypted, easy to use DHT-based network.

It has basically only one or two maintainers and doesn't provide a very rich feature set. I haven't looked into how flexible the design is but the main purpose seems to be encrypted instant messaging.

Other than that, most results where either small libraries or low-level network stacks like:

• https://github.com/libpnet/libpnet
• https://github.com/QuiltOS/QuiltNet

Why did choose to just go through crates.io and not google/other search engines:

1. Any software that we could potentially use should be released already. Everything else would be too much of a commitment for something as fundamental as our networking layer.
2. It has to be written in Rust, otherwise there is not really a point.
3. A google search mostly gives you results about "how can I open a socket in Rust and the like 🙄"

[D4nte]

Thanks @thomaseizinger I am satisfied. Go libp2p.

[bonomat]

I think libp2p is the way to go, it is well maintained, has other usecases which depend on it (ipfs) and it feels it's well-respected in the blockchain community.

[thomaseizinger]

Thanks for your feedback. I'll consider this to be done then!