Boson Crypto Benchmark

BouncyCastle (pure Java) vs libsodium (native JNR) microbenchmarks for the cryptographic primitives used in the Boson Network.

Overview

This repository contains a standalone, self-contained JMH benchmark suite designed to compare the performance of:

• BouncyCastle: Pure Java implementation (org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk18on)
• libsodium: Native implementation via JNR bindings (io.tmio:tuweni-crypto + com.github.jnr:jnr-ffi)

The benchmarks cover the primary crypto primitives used by Boson:

1. Ed25519 Signatures: Signing and verification.
2. Key Agreement: X25519 handshakes (beforenm).
3. Symmetric Encryption: crypto_box (XSalsa20-Poly1305) over different message sizes.
4. Key Derivation (KDF): Blake2b sub-key derivation.
5. Password Hashing (pwhash): Argon2id (interactive mode).

This project is standalone on purpose: it is not wired into the Boson reactor, enabling it to be built and run on any target machine without needing to compile the rest of the Boson codebase.

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Getting Started

Prerequisites

• JDK 17 or higher
• Maven 3.x

Build

Compile the codebase and package the executable JMH uber-jar:

mvn clean package

Run Benchmarks

To execute all benchmarks:

java -jar target/benchmarks.jar

Or run a specific benchmark (e.g. only Ed25519 signatures):

java -jar target/benchmarks.jar SignatureBenchmark

Run Interop Sanity Check

To verify that the BouncyCastle and libsodium implementations are byte-for-byte identical and produce compatible outputs:

java -cp target/benchmarks.jar io.bosonnetwork.benchmark.Interop

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Benchmark Results

Machine: Apple M1 Pro, arm64, 10 cores, JDK 17.0.17 (Temurin) Config: JMH, 1 fork, 3 warmup + 5 measurement iterations (1s each). Re-run the full 2-fork config for publication-grade numbers: java -jar target/benchmarks.jar.

Important: the libsodium column is the JNR binding (Apache Tuweni) - the best-dispatch native option. The lazysodium replacement uses JNA, whose higher per-call overhead would make the native column slower on small inputs, widening BC's advantage where it already wins and shrinking it where native wins.

All BC implementations are byte-for-byte identical to libsodium (verified by Interop).

Signatures (Ed25519, 64-byte message)

Operation	libsodium (JNR)	BouncyCastle	Winner
sign	72.180 ops/ms	22.444 ops/ms	libsodium ~3.2x
verify	26.656 ops/ms	17.071 ops/ms	libsodium ~1.6x

Verify is the inbound-RPC-validation hot path; the gap there is only ~1.6x, and against JNA it would narrow further.

Key agreement (X25519, per handshake)

Operation	libsodium (JNR)	BouncyCastle	Winner
beforenm / X25519	25.691 ops/ms	17.075 ops/ms	libsodium ~1.5x

(libsodium's beforenm also does an HSalsa20 step the BC X25519-only number doesn't.)

crypto_box per-message symmetric (XSalsa20-Poly1305) - the crossover

Payload	Op	libsodium (JNR)	BouncyCastle	Winner
64 B	encrypt	1,106,316 ops/s	1,772,521 ops/s	BC 1.6x
64 B	decrypt	963,446 ops/s	1,434,563 ops/s	BC 1.5x
1 KB	encrypt	345,622 ops/s	276,752 ops/s	libsodium 1.25x
1 KB	decrypt	335,712 ops/s	208,742 ops/s	libsodium 1.6x
16 KB	encrypt	27,713 ops/s	18,717 ops/s	libsodium 1.5x
256 KB	encrypt	1,774 ops/s	796 ops/s	libsodium 2.2x

Crossover is around ~1 KB: below it BC wins (FFI dispatch dominates the tiny crypto cost); above it native pulls ahead and the gap grows to ~2.2x at 256 KB (native SIMD on bulk). At 256 KB that is ~454 MB/s (native) vs ~204 MB/s (BC) on this machine. The bulk gap is likely larger on x86 with AVX2 than on M1 NEON.

crypto_kdf (Blake2b sub-key derivation)

Operation	libsodium (JNR)	BouncyCastle	Winner
derive	1,491 ops/ms	3,554 ops/ms	BC 2.4x

Tiny input -> FFI overhead dominates -> BC's inlined Blake2b wins decisively.

crypto_pwhash (Argon2id, interactive: ops=2, mem=64 MiB, p=1)

Operation	libsodium (JNR)	BouncyCastle	Winner
hash	63.1 ms/op	83.5 ms/op	libsodium 1.3x

Both ~tens of ms (deliberately slow); the 20 ms difference is irrelevant for a rare login op, and confirms FFI dispatch is noise at this cost level.

Interpretation

• Small messages (DHT RPC signatures, control < 1 KB): BC is competitive-to-faster than even JNR-libsodium, and would clearly beat JNA. Pure-Java is the right call here.
• Bulk crypto_box (active-proxy relay, > 1 KB): native wins, 1.5-2.2x and growing with size. This is the only place a native backend is clearly justified.
• kdf: BC faster. pwhash: ~comparable, rare. No wire/identity risk: BC is byte-exact.

This supports: BC pure-Java as the default backend everywhere (removes the native dependency, fixes Android, simplifies distribution), and reserve a narrow native JNI path for the active-proxy relay only if its measured bulk throughput demands it. Choosing lazysodium/JNA instead would be a per-call-overhead regression exactly where Boson does most of its crypto (small messages), for a bulk win JNI would deliver better anyway.