# The Discovery Service

The posemesh discovery service allows participants to request and get connected to other participants. It keeps track of each participant’s reputation and role-based access controls (RBAC), and is the posemesh’s interface to the blockchain.

To be able to provide or request work or data, a participant must first register itself, its capabilities, reputation and credit balance with the discovery service. The discovery service is a distributed hash table (DHT); a geographically partitioned key-value store where the key represents the domain and the values are the participants and capabilities associated with that domain.

When a participant wishes to join a domain, it uses the discovery service to locate the `domain manager` responsible for serving domain data and job orchestration within the domain cluster. This orchestrator provides an authentication key to the new participant, facilitating secure communications within the domain cluster.

{% hint style="info" %}
The posemesh discovery service never receives the domain cluster authentication key, and so the protocol is unable to listen to intra-domain communication.
{% endhint %}

Having a distributed hash table for the global discovery service eliminates the risk normally associated with centralized discovery servers, such as downtime or targeted attacks that could compromise the entire network. Instead, the discovery service's decentralized framework allows for continuous operation, even if some participant nodes become unavailable.

The blockchain intersects with the posemesh at the discovery service, allowing us to authenticate, pair and reward posemesh participants in an open and trustless way.


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