Blockchain-Honours-Project

README

Blockchain For Education

Feel free to send me any feedback that you may have about this project, or alternatively, feel free to make any changes to the repository within a new branch and start a pull request.

Click here to view the Blockchain Architecture.

To view a presentation on the project, find a PDF version here.

To view a demonstration of the project, find a short video here

Contact information is as follows:

Name: Zack Holmberg
Email: zack_holmberg@outlook.com

Setting up and running the system

• Prequisites:

  • Go 1.17
  • UNIX environment

• First, clone the repository to your local machine.

• Then, open up at least three terminal windows (one for Middlware, at least two for Peers)

• Navigate one terminal window inside src/middlware/

• Navigate at least two other terminal window sinside src/peer/

• NOTE: If you encounter the error

  go: cannot find main module
  

  when running the executables, you will have to add the blockchain source folder to your GOROOT directories. To do this, simply run go env in your terminal, navigate inside the directory that was printed, and copy and paste the entire src/blockchain directory into your GOROOT directory.

• You must run the Middlware executable FIRST. To run the Middleware, enter go run main.go in the Middleware terminal window

  • Note: For any node that you run, you may get a popup similar to the following:

    Do you want the application “main” to accept incoming network connections?
    

    Just hit 'allow' if this popup does occur.

• After the Middleware is running, enter the same command, go run main.go, in all the Peer terminal windows.

• Each node will take a few seconds to initialize. Once you see messages being logged (Prefixed with date and time), the node is ready for use.

Using the system

• The system can be interacted with by executing commands through the Peer node. The Middleware has no interaction, but it logs a lot of information about the blockchain's current state.
• To interact with the Peer, you simply enter the command you desire into the terminal window. All current commands are:

Command	Description	Example Output
help	Lists all valid commands with their descriptions.	The content of this table
transaction	Prompts user for recipient and amount values to send a new transaction. Expected input is of the form 'index of recipient in peers list,amount'. For example, '1,5' excluding the apostrophes.	Enter transaction data or 'cancel' to cancel.
peers	Lists all of the peers on the network that the user can send currency to.	index=0, ip=::1, port=8080 [Middleware Peer] index=1, ip=::1, port=55083
bal	Prints out the user's current wallet balance.	10

• For example, after you run a couple Peers, you can enter peers in one of the Peers' terminal windows to get a list of known Peers, followed by transaction and then 1,5 to send 5 units of currency to the Peer at index 1 of the Peers list. You cannot send currency to the Middleware, only fellow Peers. If you attempt to do so, you will get a warning and no transaction will occur. If you successfully send a transaction to a fellow Peer, a new mining session will occur.

Swapping Component Implementations

• The system supports the swapping of the Proof of Work and Proof of Stake consensus mechanisms/components to use in the system. A Peer can be created with either implementation, however every Peer on the network must be using the same consensus mechanism.
• To swap between the two components, simply open src/peer/main.go and comment-out the Peer initialization with the conensus method you do not want to use. To swap components, comment-out the one implemenation and un-comment the other.