nanochain

This project holds a simplified implementation of a blockchain network.

The only purpose of this implementation is to better understand the foundations of a generic PoW-based network.

Dependencies

• ZeroMQ
  • On MacOS: brew install zeromq
  • On Linux: Visit https://zeromq.org/download/

Building

git clone [email protected]:AIRLegend/nanochain.git && cd nanochain
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make

Running

# Node program
./build/bin/node

# Miner program
./build/bin/miner

# Wallet program
./build/bin/wallet

Project structure at a high level

It's divided into several targets:

core

Static library containing common network functionalities (definition and implementation of components like serialization, blocks, signing, hashing or transactions). All programs made for this network may link this target.

node

Executable for running a node of the network, incharged of receiving and broadcasting transactions and blocks, maintaining a local copy of the blockchain and validating it.

miner

Program which queries the nodes for new transactions and creates (and broadcasts) new blocks using the PoW approximation.

wallet

Little utility for creating and broadcasting transactions.

Playing with it

After building, simply start a node with

./build/bin/node

It will start listening for transactions. Then, you can send a dummy TX running the wallet program.

./build/bin/wallet

The transaction will be registered on the node's mempool. Then, run the miner for retreiving it and creating a new block. The block will also be broadcasted to the node.

./build/bin/miner