Blockstore
Name registrations on the bitcoin blockchain
Blockstore enables human-readable name registrations on the Bitcoin blockchain, along with the ability to store associated data in external datastores. You can use it to register globally unique names, associate data with those names, and transfer them between Bitcoin addresses. Anyone can perform lookups on those names and securely obtain the data associated with them.
Blockstore uses the Bitcoin blockchain for storing name operations and data hashes, and the Kademlia-based distributed hash table (DHT) and other external datastores for storing the full data files outside of the blockchain.
NOTE: This repo is going through rapid development. If you notice any issues during installation etc please report them in Github issues. We hope to have a stable, easy to install, version out very soon!
Table of contents
- Overview
- Quick start
- Getting started
- What’s included
- Documentation
- Design decisions
- Protocol details
- Definitions
- FAQ
- Community
- Contributing
- Copyright and license
Overview
This document is meant to provide an overview of how to get blockstore up and running on Mac OS X, Linux, and other UNIX-like operating systems. It is meant to be a high-level walk-through for application developers who want to run their own Blockstore instance. Basic proficiency with the command-line is required.
Quick start
The fastest way to get started with blockstore is to use pip:
pip install blockstore
If you encounter any problems during the pip install, see the detailed install instructions.
Getting started
Start blockstored and index the blockchain:
$ blockstored start
Then, perform name lookups:
$ blockstore-cli lookup werner.id
{
"address": "1KRca8gGiCiTNGR65iXMPQ6d5fisDdN3ZF",
"first_registered": 374132,
"last_renewed": 374132,
"revoked": false,
"sender": "76a914ca19f0c96683b6cabfb5c9a406bebc6771d8ede488ac",
"sender_pubkey": "0411d88aa37a0eea476a5b63ca4b1cd392ded830865...",
"value_hash": "3dafd5f42798df3045cd2eb70a71cccf8500e6d4"
}
Next, learn how to register names of your own, as well as transfer them and associate data with them:
What's included
Within the install you'll find the following directories and files. You'll see something like this:
blockstore/
├── bin/
│ ├── blockstored
│ └── README.md
├── blockstore/
│ ├── __init__.py
│ ├── blockmirrord.py
│ ├── blockmirrord.tac
│ ├── blockstore.tac
│ ├── blockstore-testset.tac
│ ├── blockstored.py
│ ├── build_nameset.py
│ ├── coinkit.patch
│ ├── dht/
│ │ ├── __init__.py
│ │ ├── image/
│ │ │ ├── Dockerfile
│ │ │ └── README.md
│ │ ├── plugin.py
│ │ ├── README.md
│ │ ├── server.tac
│ │ ├── storage.py
│ │ └── test.py
│ ├── lib/
│ │ ├── __init__.py
│ │ ├── b40.py
│ │ ├── config.py
│ │ ├── hashing.py
│ │ ├── nameset/
│ │ │ ├── __init__.py
│ │ │ ├── namedb.py
│ │ │ └── virtualchain_hooks.py
│ │ ├── operations/
│ │ │ ├── __init__.py
│ │ │ ├── nameimport.py
│ │ │ ├── namespacepreorder.py
│ │ │ ├── namespaceready.py
│ │ │ ├── namespacereveal.py
│ │ │ ├── preorder.py
│ │ │ ├── register.py
│ │ │ ├── revoke.py
│ │ │ ├── transfer.py
│ │ │ └── update.py
│ │ ├── README.md
│ │ └── scripts.py
│ ├── tests/
│ │ └── unit_tests.py
│ └── TODO.txt
├── Dockerfile
├── images/
│ └── Dockerfile
├── LICENSE
├── MANIFEST.in
├── README.md
├── requirements.txt
└── setup.py
Documentation
Blockstore’s detailed documentation is located included in this repo’s Wiki.
Design decisions
Protocol details
Definitions
FAQ
Community
The Blockstack community is a group of blockchain companies and nonprofits coming together to define and develop a set of software protocols and tools to serve as a common backend for blockchain-powered decentralized applications. We are opening membership to the public, welcoming all developers and companies that are interested in joining the community and contributing to Blockstack development.
For more information please visit the community website Blockstack.org
Our community is welcoming on both, our public Slack and public Forum.
Contributing
We welcome any small or big contributions! Please take a moment to review the following guidelines in order to make the contribution process easy and effective for everyone involved.
The main authors of Blockstore are:
Along with code contributors and other people who've helped in various ways.
Copyright and license
Code and documentation copyright 2015 by Blockstack.org.
Code released under the GPL v3 license. Docs released under Creative Commons.