DEPRECATED

Development is now happening at:

https://github.com/axiom-org/axiom

coinkit

Tools for making cryptocurrency stuff.

What is this

This code runs a custom blockchain protocol on which you can own and transfer cryptocurrency.

The consensus mechanism is based on the Stellar Consensus Protocol, aka SCP. See:

https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-protocol.pdf

How to install it

I provide OS X instructions only. Good luck.

First install Postgres and create a test database.

NOTE: this might have to be Postgres 10+, I don't know.

brew install postgres
brew services start postgresql

Then install go on your machine.

brew install go

You will need to set up a GOPATH, and then clone this repo into the src directory under your gopath. I suggest making ~/go your GOPATH. Then, you should clone this repo into $GOPATH/src/github.com/lacker/coinkit.

When you build this repo, it creates multiple binaries in $GOPATH/bin. I suggest adding $GOPATH/bin to your $PATH - if you don't, you'll have to run $GOPATH/bin/cclient instead of just cclient, and so on.

# Install dependencies
cd ~/go/src/github.com/lacker/coinkit
go get -t ./...

# Create databases
# This expects your postgres setup to allow a login with your username
# and the password "test", and for your user to have createdb permissions.
# If you get an authentication failure you will have to set that up yourself.
./create-databases.sh

# Run the unit tests
go test ./...

# Build everything
go install ./...

If you have older databases set up, the tests might fail with some weird database errors. If this happens run:

clear-test.sh

How to run it

Commands are from the ~/go/src/github.com/lacker/coinkit directory.

To run a local cluster of four cservers:

./debug-local.sh

(Or ./start-local.sh to run them in the background.)

To stop the local cluster:

./stop-local.sh

To clear the local databases:

./clear-local.sh

You can check the current account balance with:

cclient status [publicKey]

If no key is provided, it will prompt you for a passphrase. You can also use this to create your own account - just use any passphrase, and then note what the public key is so that other accounts can send you money.

To send money:

cclient send [user] [amount]

The send command will keep checking back to see when the money leaves the source account. It should just take a second or two to send the money.

To start off with, all the money is in one account where the passphrase is "mint". If you're just poking around, I recommend sending some money from the mint to an account of your own and then checking your account's balance as a little exercise.

To check the servers' health, go to http://127.0.01:8000/healthz in your browser. (Or 8001/8002/8003 for the other three servers.)

Benchmarking

TODO: make sure these benchmarks are fast enough to run on typical machines.

# Testing a 4-server network with one client
go test ./network -run=zzz -bench=BenchmarkSendMoney1$ -benchtime=10s

Code organization

• cmd: The code for the command-line tools, cserver and cclient.
• consensus: The logic to run the SCP. This is how blocks are formed.
• data: The code that handles operations for data manipulation.
• local: Configuration for running a testnet with all nodes on the local machine.
• network: The networking wrapper to run a server and communicate with peers.
• util: Encryption logic, tools used in lots of places, that sort of thing.