Peer-discovery protocols within P2P networks are often vulnerable: because creating network identities is essentially free, adversaries can eclipse honest nodes or partition the overlay. This threat is especially acute for blockchains, whose security depends on resilient peer connectivity. We present AetherWeave, a stake-backed peer-discovery protocol that ties network participation to deposited stake, raising the cost of large-scale attacks. We prove that, with high probability, either the honest overlay remains connected or a $(1{-}δ)$-fraction of nodes in every smaller component raise an attack-detection flag -- even against a very powerful adversary. To our knowledge, AetherWeave is the first peer-discovery protocol to simultaneously provide Sybil resistance and privacy: nodes prove they hold valid stake without revealing which deposit they own, and gossiping does not expose peer-table contents. A cryptographic commitment scheme rate-limits discovery requests per round; exceeding the limit yields a publicly verifiable misbehavior proof that triggers on-chain slashing. Beyond deposit and slashing, the protocol requires no on-chain interaction, with per-node communication scaling as $O(s\sqrt{n})$. We validate our design through a mean-field analysis with closed-form convergence bounds, extensive adversarial simulations, and an end-to-end prototype built by forking Prysm, a leading Ethereum consensus client.

翻译：在P2P网络中，对等发现协议通常存在脆弱性：由于创建网络身份的代价几乎为零，攻击者可对诚实节点实施日蚀攻击或对覆盖网络进行分区。对于其安全性依赖于弹性对等连接性的区块链而言，此威胁尤为严峻。我们提出AetherWeave——一种基于权益的对等发现协议，该协议将网络参与行为与已质押权益绑定，从而抬升大规模攻击的代价。我们证明，即使面对极其强大的攻击者，该协议仍能以高概率确保：诚实覆盖网络保持连通，或每个较小组件中至少$(1{-}δ)$比例的节点会触发攻击检测标记。据我们所知，AetherWeave是首个同时具备抗女巫攻击能力与隐私保护性的对等发现协议：节点在不暴露所持具体存款的情况下证明其持有有效权益，而八卦传播机制不会泄露对等节点表内容。密码学承诺方案对每轮发现请求实施速率限制；超过阈值将生成可公开验证的不当行为证明，并在链上触发罚没机制。除质押与罚没外，该协议无需链上交互，其单节点通信量规模为$O(s\sqrt{n})$。我们通过具备闭式收敛边界的平均场分析、广泛的对抗仿真实验，以及基于主流以太坊共识客户端Prysm分叉构建的端到端原型系统，验证了本设计方案的可行性。