"Seed nodes: To prevent problems in gossip communications, Cassandra designates a list of nodes as the seeds in a cluster. This is critical for a node starting up for the first time. By default, a node remembers other nodes it has gossiped with between subsequent restarts. The seed node designation has no purpose other than bootstrapping the gossip process for new nodes joining the cluster. Thus, seed nodes are not a single point of failure, nor do they have any other special purpose in cluster operations other than the bootstrapping of nodes"