Figure 3.1: Hedera Hashgraph’s Gossip Protocol
Gossip about gossip: Information is transmitted from node to node
through a gossip network. When a node receives the transactions, it
transfers or gossips this information to the next node which is called
an “Event”. While doing so, it also shares the identifiers of the
previous event as it received and also the previous event it sent. In
Figure 3.2, we can find a sample on what an event looks like, i.e.,
signature, timestamp, current transaction, and two hashes of the
other two transactions.
Virtual voting: As each participating node receives the events from
the others, they can independently analyse that shared history in
order to determine a consensus timestamp for all the transactions.
This consensus mechanism that Hedera’s participants use is called
virtual voting.