Ash

Ash is a crypto-currency built from scratch.

This is a fun project. I am writing this to learn about blockchains and crypto currency. I am not an expert. This is not intended to be a real crypto currency.

The goals with this project are

• Mining: A single chain is synced across a peer-to-peer network based on cumulative difficulty
• Networking: Miners can join/leave the mining network without any configuration on a central node.
• Wallets: Users can send coins from one wallet to another.
• Security: The network should be smart enough to reject basic attempts at forging chains and transactions.

A lot of this project is based on this Javascript tutorial. However this project uses C++ (as of this writing I am using C++17, but hope to switch to C++20 soon).

Many people new to crypto-currency have questions about how they can send money from one person to another, or how they can receive payment from another person. These questions usually have somewhat complicated answers that involve third-party software and somewhat technical details. The goal with this project is to provide a simple interface to send and receive tokens. Of course, with this comes added risk, but we believe people are smart enough to know when they shouldn't take those risks!

Todo

These are the next priorities I am working on with some explanation of what I intend to do. Any help is more than welcome!

• Get rid of the proprietary database - For some reason I decided to go with a proprietary database for storing the chain. This should be refactored to use something else like Google's LevelDB (which is what Bitcoin uses)
• Get rid of the text hashes and ids - The hash values for blocks and ids for transactions use strings produced from SHA256 values. Instead we should be using CryptoPP::Integer and do the string conversation where and when neeed.
• Refactor difficulty - Currently difficulty is based on the number of leading zeros in the string value of the hash of the block. This should use a method more widely used in crypto, such as finding a hash integer value that's less than a given value.

Building

The following tools are required on all platforms:

• CMake version 3.19
• conan version 1.32.1

All platforms require a C++17 compiler, CMake and conan.

Windows

This project has been compiled on Windows 10 using Visual Studio 2019. Because of an issue with range-v3, Windows SDK 10.0.18362.0 is required and can be downloaded here.

To create a .sln file, run the following commands from the root source directory.

mkdir build
cd build
conan install .. -s build_type=Debug --build missing
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DBUILD_ASH_TESTS=On

macos

This project has been compiled on macos 10.15 using Apple clang 11.0. I have been using Visual Studio Code as my IDE. To create the necessary files run the following commands from the src folder:

mkdir build
cd build
conan install .. -s build_type=Debug --build missing
cmake .. "-GNinja" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DBUILD_ASH_TESTS=On

If there are no errors then the executable can be built with:

cmake --build . -- -j 8

Ubuntu

Documentation

Settings File

Documentation about configuring Ash.

Bookmarks

A list of relevant links used while developing Ash.

Testing Doc

Testing plans for Ash

Screenshots

Index

View Block

View Address