Reticulum/docs/markdown/understanding.md

Destination Naming

Destinations are created and named in an easy to understand dotted notation of aspects, and represented on the network as a hash of this value. The hash is a SHA-256 truncated to 128 bits. The top level aspect should always be a unique identifier for the application using the destination. The next levels of aspects can be defined in any way by the creator of the application.

Aspects can be as long and as plentiful as required, and a resulting long destination name will not impact efficiency, as names are always represented as truncated SHA-256 hashes on the network.

As an example, a destination for a environmental monitoring application could be made up of the application name, a device type and measurement type, like this:

app name  : environmentlogger
aspects   : remotesensor, temperature

full name : environmentlogger.remotesensor.temperature
hash      : 4faf1b2e0a077e6a9d92fa051f256038

For the single destination, Reticulum will automatically append the associated public key as a destination aspect before hashing. This is done to ensure only the correct destination is reached, since anyone can listen to any destination name. Appending the public key ensures that a given packet is only directed at the destination that holds the corresponding private key to decrypt the packet.