Static peer lists become outdated very quickly

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When you run a Cosmos node and connectivity starts failing, a static peer list is often not enough.

What you need in that moment is simple: peers that are actually reachable from the outside right now, not peers that were visible from one node a few days ago.

That is why we built…

Cumulo Live Peers

It is a live peer checker for Cosmos Hub mainnet and testnet, updated every 30 minutes and available through both a public dashboard and API.

The idea is straightforward: keep checking which peers are really reachable, filter out the unstable ones, and give node operators a list they can actually use.

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How it works

Every cycle, Cumulo Live Peers builds a candidate pool from several sources:

  • Our own Cosmos Hub node

  • RPC endpoints from validators in the ecosystem

  • Addrbooks and peer lists collected from validator resources

  • Peers contributed directly by operators

Then we test each candidate with a direct TCP check against its P2P port.

If a peer is not reachable from the outside, it does not make it into the published list.

We also do not publish peers just because they appeared once. To be included, a peer needs to show consistent stability across roughly the last 5 hours of observations. If a peer disappears or becomes unreachable, it is automatically removed after a few cycles.

Not just “more peers”

The goal is not to publish the biggest possible list.

The goal is to publish a useful one.

Peers are scored based on:

  • Recent stability

  • Outbound activity

  • How many independent sources confirmed the same peer

  • Geographic diversity

This helps avoid lists full of random peers that may not help much in practice, especially when an operator is trying to recover connectivity quickly.

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Ready to use

You can use the live peer lists here:

Mainnet:
https://cumulo.pro/services/cosmos/peers

Testnet:
https://cumulo.pro/services/cosmos_testnet/peers

Full technical documentation:
https://github.com/Cumulo-pro/Cumulo-Front-Chain/blob/main/check_peers/PEERS_SYSTEM.md

Validator resource lists

To make the external sources more useful, we also maintain public validator resource lists for Cosmos Hub mainnet and testnet.

These include RPCs, addrbooks and contributed peers.

The more validators contribute their resources, the better the scoring becomes for everyone, because the system can compare more independent sources and build a more representative view of the network.

If you are a Cosmos Hub validator and want to add your resources, you can open a PR here:

Mainnet validators:
https://github.com/Cumulo-pro/cumulo-cosmoshub-infra/blob/main/data/validators.json

Testnet validators:
https://github.com/Cumulo-pro/cumulo-cosmoshub-infra/blob/main/data/validators_testnet.json

Why we built this

At Cumulo, we run validator infrastructure across Cosmos and modular networks, and peer connectivity is one of those operational problems that looks simple until it is not.

Most operators have had that moment where a node is stuck, peers are not behaving as expected, and the usual static lists are not helping much.

Cumulo Live Peers is our attempt to make that part of node operations a little more practical: live checks, public data, reproducible logic and a list that keeps updating without anyone having to maintain it manually.

We hope this is useful for Cosmos Hub validators, node operators and teams running infrastructure.

Feedback, suggestions and validator contributions are very welcome. :saluting_face:

1 Like
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not seeing our peers in the list

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Hey! Thanks for checking it! :clap:

Just to clarify: we don’t manually curate or choose which peers appear in the final list. Cumulo Live Peers is a live system.

It collects peer candidates from several sources: our own node, validator RPCs, addrbooks, peer lists and direct contributions. Then it checks whether those peers are actually reachable from outside through their P2P port.

If your peers are not showing up, they are probably not being picked up from the sources we currently index, or they have not passed the external reachability/stability checks yet.

The list only includes peers that are reachable from outside and stable across recent observation windows.

Feel free to add your RPC / addrbook / peers through a PR here, and the system will start checking them in the next cycles :ok_hand: :

Mainnet:
https://github.com/Cumulo-pro/cumulo-cosmoshub-infra/blob/main/data/validators.json

Testnet:
https://github.com/Cumulo-pro/cumulo-cosmoshub-infra/blob/main/data/validators_testnet.json

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we are literally the first entry on that gh file =)

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Hey @serejandmyself! Yes, Citizen Web3 is the first entry and your RPC gets queried every cycle, appreciate that! :folded_hands:

Having a good peer doesn’t automatically mean it’ll show up in the list though. The score for each peer depends mostly on how many independent sources see it at the same time, a peer spotted by 5 different RPCs will rank higher than one only visible from a single source, even if both are equally stable. It’s less about peer quality and more about how widely it’s seen across the network.

We’re actively adding more validator RPCs to the system to broaden the source base and make the scoring more representative. If any validator wants to contribute their RPC or addrbook, the JSON is open to PRs!

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Basically my questions. Where can i see your methods precisely? We re building vladiatorinfo.com and ibc.valdiatorinfo.com - worth to connect i think

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Hey! Sami already shared the full documentation at the top of the thread, should cover everything you need! :saluting_face:

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I would like to connect with you guys. We can integrate your work into what we do, so you get more exposure too