Systems and methods for scalable discovery in contention-based peer-to-peer (P2P) networks are described herein. A method for managing access to a contention-based broadcast channel in a P2P wireless communication network as described herein includes obtaining one or more system timing parameters, the system timing parameters including at least a collision probability tolerance; and configuring a time structure for access to the contention-based broadcast channel using the system timing parameters, wherein the wakeup intervals are allocated between a contention period and a non-contention period and configuring the time structure comprises setting an upper-bound backoff counter value associated with the contention period as a function of at least the collision probability tolerance.