Chain plane
Solana carries rendezvous hints, epoch timing, sampler publications, and heavier covert commitments. Fast epochs keep liveness moving. Slow epochs anchor the more expensive covert state.
Protocol
Three planes, one runtime, multiple delivery paths.
Covenant uses Solana for rendezvous and timing, QUIC for live peer-to-peer transport, relayers when the direct path fails, and threshold-sharded storage when the recipient is offline.
P2P plane
Peers hole-punch and run live messaging over direct QUIC whenever the network path allows it. Live messages prefer direct transport rather than chain or storage.
Storage plane
Offline payloads are Shamir-split into k-of-n shards and placed on independent storage nodes so no single server can reconstruct the ciphertext by itself.
Fallback Logic
Delivery is layered, not binary.
First choice
Direct QUIC
Direct sessions are the preferred live path. They keep messages off chain and away from storage nodes.
When the path breaks
Relay fallback
Symmetric NATs and similar failure modes can still converge through a relayer without changing the higher-level envelope model.
When the peer disappears
Offline storage
Delayed delivery is not “store the plaintext somewhere.” Ciphertext is sealed, split, and distributed below the reconstruction threshold.
Questions
The protocol questions people ask first.
Why use Solana at all?
Because Covenant needs a shared timing and rendezvous substrate. Solana is the coordination plane, not the normal live message path.
Does every message touch chain?
No. Live traffic prefers direct QUIC. Chain activity is for rendezvous, timing, publications, and heavier commitment-facing state.
What if NAT traversal fails?
That is where relayers come in. The relayed path exists for the network cases where direct hole punching does not converge.
What does a storage node learn?
Only a shard, not the whole ciphertext. Threshold splitting means a single server does not have enough material to reconstruct the payload.