Resource 1 says that “There is no encryption as part of the Ethereum protocol—all messages that are sent as part of the operation of the Ethereum network can (necessarily) be read by everyone. As such, private keys are only used to create digital signatures for transaction authentication.”
Resource 2 says the opposite: “The RLPx protocol, used in the current version of Ethereum, defines the transport protocol used to encapsulate Ethereum RPC messages. … In short, Ethereum nodes use Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman to derive a shared secret for the RLPx session. This shared secret is then used with a key derivation function to derive a key for encryption and authentication. The derived keys are used by the peers to encrypt and authenticate network-layer messages.”
- Is RLPx used to encrypt data between peers in Ethereum similar to how an application encrypts data using TLS?
- If so, are these connections in effect RLPx tunnels?
- So all the Ethereum IP payload is encrypted at layer 4 using AES in Counter Mode? Why RPLx over TLS?
