Basic Hydra head
🛠️ This document is a work in progress.
This document outlines the deployment architecture of a basic Hydra head. It serves as a foundational reference for other topologies discussed in this chapter and is illustrated below:
The basic setup of a Hydra head involves several hydra-nodes, each connected to the Cardano network via a cardano-node (not depicted in the diagram). A Hydra client, such as hydra-tui, typically connects locally to a hydra-node to initiate a Hydra head using an off-chain network. The diagram displays two Hydra heads (colored blue and green) established between two distinct sets of hydra-nodes. The lines in the diagram represent Hydra network connections, and the circles symbolize the Hydra head state and credentials, collectively referred to as a Hydra head party.
The diagram does not show multiple, logical Hydra heads operating concurrently within the same hydra-node. This capability, likely to be supported in the future, would facilitate the reuse of network connections between hydra-node processes.
Each head, whether blue or green, progresses independently and requires the endorsement of all respective Hydra parties within each head. For instance, the green head requires two signatures, while the blue head requires four.