Seed Hypermedia’s p2p sync is built around identity, trust, and relevance. Because of that, it is fundamentally different from gossip protocols, even if both operate in distributed, peer-to-peer environments.

1. Gossip spreads widely; Seed sync is narrowly scoped

Gossip protocols disseminate messages across a broad or semi-broad set of peers using mesh fanout and probabilistic forwarding. They don’t know who specifically should receive the message- only that it should spread. This just allows spam to spread.

Seed sync has the opposite goal: replicate resources only to peers with explicit trust or relevance relationships.

No broadcast. No fanout.

2. Seed’s propagation graph is identity-defined

Eligible recipients are known in advance via:

verified ownership of sites

trusted contacts (and therefore peers),

including identity delegation, or

explicit subscriptions.

This is directed, bounded, and user-controlled, not emergent or random.

We should never push content to uninterested or random peers.

3. Seed does not use epidemic convergence

Gossip relies on repeated spreading until high-probability coverage is reached. Seed does not perform:

mesh spreading,

redundant forwarding of blobs, or,

probabilistic delivery across the network.

Our sync should have targeted delivery, not epidemic dissemination.