LabChain

In our BitLab Blockchain Course we develop our own blockchain platform.

Objectives for the Platform are:

• Exchangeable components
• Strong documentation
• Excellent test coverage
• Well established software engineering processes
• Good maintainability and extendability after project - conclusion

Project Prerequisites

• Python3 (https://www.python.org/)
  • PEP 8 Style Guide for Python Code (https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/)
• Git Repository (https://git-scm.com/)
• Agile development
  • Code reviews, iterative development, extensive testing, no requirement spec. overhead
• Test first approach (Almost every function deserves a unit test)
  • Python3 Unit Testing Framework (https://docs.python.org/3/library/unittest.html)

Please use git precommit hooks to style check before commiting. We created a global pre-commit hook which you have to install by calling ./scripts/install-hooks.bash.

For the Hook to work, you'll need to install pycodestyle: pip install pycodestyle

This script creats a symlink from .git//hooks/pre-commit to scripts/pre-commit.bash. It is based on a script of sigmoidal.io (https://sigmoidal.io/automatic-code-quality-checks-with-git-hooks/) and the pep8-git-hook by cbrueffer (https://github.com/cbrueffer/pep8-git-hook).

Setup

Run the following to install all dependencies:

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Run the Node

python3 node.py --port 8080 --peers <ip1>:<port1> <ip2>:<port2> ...

-v and -vv set the log level to INFO or DEBUG. -p or --plot enables frequent plotting of the blockchain into ~/.labchain/plot --plot-dir <directory> lets you choose a different directory for plot output --plot-auto-open enables opening the plot in your browser whenever it is created (may become annoying)

Run the Client

python3 client.py <blockchain-node-ip> <blockchain-node-port>

-v and -vv set the log level to INFO or DEBUG.

Run the unit tests

Executing a single test:

python3 -m unittest test.<test_name>

Notice that you must not add a .py to the name of the test.

For running all the unit tests execute:

python3 -m unittest discover

TODO

• Check if README is still correct
• Changed directory structure
• Remove presentations
• Refactor names
• Remove Node red stuff and MQTT
• Remove visualizer
• Clean up existing branches
• Remove nogas and check PEP8 Styleguide
• Check unit tests
• Add an example (quick start/ getting started) to the README
• Remove mocks
• Introduce version number
• Remove constraint to store only a certain number of preceding blocks
• Check difficulty calculation
• Check block timestamp
• Put every class into a file
• Update versions in PIP requirements file
• Remove 10 seconds delay to wait for incoming transactions
• Currently the blocksynchronisation seems not to work ( > 2 peers) -> fix it
• Remove auto discovery mechanism
• The test_account.py uses the MockCryptoHelper but should use the real CryptoHelper
• Check the calls of the crypto helper methods (First json.dumps(...) then in the crypto helper json.loads(...). There must be a better way.)

Nice to have

• Use JSON for configuration
• Remove SQLite file from ressource directory
• Rename configuration in default_configuration and copy it in case there is no configuration provided
• Check and refactor block explorer
• Blockchain instance as singleton
• Check networking class (max number of connections,...)
• Remove large number of parameters in functions
• Create a setup.py
• Create a docker file (data directory must be mountable and the node must be configurable)