The disclosure provides an approach for decentralizing control plane operations in a network environment that includes transport nodes configured to implement a logical overlay network. A method includes transmitting a global list of transport nodes to each of the plurality of transport nodes from a management plane, the global list including an ordered list of the plurality of transport nodes. The method also includes transmitting a neighbor index value to each of the plurality of transport nodes, where the transport nodes each compute a corresponding list of neighbor transport nodes based on the neighbor index value and the global list of transport nodes. The method also includes, based on determining an update to a state of the logical overlay network has occurred by a first transport node, transmitting an update message from the first transport node to each transport node in the first transport node's list of neighbor transport nodes.