You can access information about the optimization contest on the official Monero site: https://www.getmonero.org/2025/04/05/fcmp++-contest.html

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As shortwavesurfer noted monerod also utilizes seed nodes. The user is able to specify their own seeds with the --seed-node flag. It’s also possible to add other nodes with --add-priority-node or --add-peer

You can find more p2p documentation at https://docs.getmonero.org/interacting/monerod-reference/#p2p-network

Thank you for the write-up, I really appreciate it. You make some excellent points. Consider bringing this up in the CCS proposal discussion.

Can you expound on that and perhaps share some examples of your latter point?