BitClout is a blockchain built from the ground up to support a fully-featured social network. Its architecture is similar to Bitcoin, only it supports complex social network data like profiles, posts, follows, creator coin transactions, and more.
This repo contains all of the consensus code for the BitClout protocol. While it can technically be built and run as a stand-alone binary, it is mainly intended to be "composed" into other projects that want to build on top of BitClout. We provide multiple examples of how to do this in this README.
Below we provide a few real-world examples of how to compose BitClout core into your project.
Example 1: A BitClout Website (aka bitclout.com)
The code that powers bitclout.com is fully open-source such that anyone in the world can run it, and it consists of three repositories:
The repo that is most interesting for understanding the role of BitClout core is backend because it effectively includes core as a library and uses its public API to run a node. Then, it builds on core's basic functionality to expose a rich API of its own that can be used to construct transactions, submit transactions to the network, manage user data, and much more.
The backend repo's API is then utilized by frontend and identity, which are Angular apps that are served as the frontend to bitclout.com.
Rosetta is an API developed by Coinbase and used by exchanges all over the world to list coins. For most modern exchanges, implementing a Rosetta API makes it a breeze to integrate a coin because all of their infrastructure can plug into a standardized interface.
Because exchanges have a different set of needs than what's required to run a BitClout web app, composing core allowed us to build a fully Dockerized Rosetta API that conforms perfectly to spec as its own self-contained service. This allows exchanges to integrate BitClout without having to run the unnecessary services associated with serving bitclout.com.
For more information on the BitClout Rosetta API, see our bitclout-rosetta repo here:
Another example of composing the core repo is the BitClout MongoDB Dumper.
This tool does the following:
- It includes core as a library
- It uses its embedded core code to download all of the blockchain data
- It takes all of the blockchain data and indexes it into MongoDB
This gives users the ability to query all of the chain data using the MongoDB commandline tool, or to layer a product like Retool on top of it.
Because core is intended to be composed into other projects, we suggest that users who want to run it start by reading the README in the backend repo mentioned previously. This repo provides instructions on how set up a dev environment for a full frontend and backend stack that can serve a full clone of bitclout.com with one's own custom feed.
We also provide a run repo that shows how to run this full stack in a fully Dockerized production environment.
The architecture for BitClout was heavily-inspired by Bitcoin. We also owe a debt of gratitude to the developers of btcd for producing a truly amazing Go Bitcoin client that served as a reference when building BitClout.