Skycoin is a next-generation cryptocurrency.
Skycoin was written from scratch and designed over four years to realize the ideal of Bitcoin and represents the apex of cryptocurrency design. Skycoin is not designed to add features to Bitcoin, but rather improves Bitcoin by increasing simplicity, security and stripping out everything non-essential.
Some people have hyped the Skycoin Project as leading into "Bitcoin 3.0". The coin itself is not "Bitcoin 3.0", but is rather "Bitcoin 1.0". Bitcoin is a prototype crypto-coin. Skycoin was designed to be what Bitcoin would look like if it were built from scratch, to remedy the rough edges in the Bitcoin design.
- no duplicate coin-base outputs
- enforced checks for hash collisions
- simple deterministic wallets
- no transaction malleability
- no signature malleability
- removal of the scripting language
- CoinJoin and normal transactions are indistinguishable
- elimination of edge-cases that prevent independent node implementations
- <=10 second transaction times
- elimination of the need for mining to achieve blockchain consensus
- skycoin.net
- Skycoin Blog
- Skycoin Docs
- Skycoin Blockchain Explorer
- Skycoin Development Telegram Channel
- Skycoin Github Wiki
- Changelog
- Installation
- API Documentation
- Integrating Skycoin with your application
- Contributing a node to the network
- Creating a new coin
- Running with a custom coin hour burn factor
- Running with a custom max transaction size
- Running with a custom max decimal places
- URI Specification
- Wire protocol user agent
- Development
- Responsible Disclosure
Skycoin supports go1.10+.
Golang 1.10+ Installation/Setup
go get github.com/skycoin/skycoin/...
This will download github.com/skycoin/skycoin
to $GOPATH/src/github.com/skycoin/skycoin
.
You can also clone the repo directly with git clone https://github.com/skycoin/skycoin
,
but it must be cloned to this path: $GOPATH/src/github.com/skycoin/skycoin
.
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/skycoin/skycoin
make run
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/skycoin/skycoin
make run-help
Example:
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/skycoin/skycoin
make ARGS="--launch-browser=false -data-dir=/custom/path" run
This is the quickest way to start using Skycoin using Docker.
$ docker volume create skycoin-data
$ docker volume create skycoin-wallet
$ docker run -ti --rm \
-v skycoin-data:/data/.skycoin \
-v skycoin-wallet:/wallet \
-p 6000:6000 \
-p 6420:6420 \
skycoin/skycoin
This image has a skycoin
user for the skycoin daemon to run, with UID and GID 10000.
When you mount the volumes, the container will change their owner, so you
must be aware that if you are mounting an existing host folder any content you
have there will be own by 10000.
The container will run with some default options, but you can change them
by just appending flags at the end of the docker run
command. The following
example will show you the available options.
docker run --rm skycoin/skycoin -help
Access the dashboard: http://localhost:6420.
Access the API: http://localhost:6420/version.
The skycoin/skycoindev-cli docker image is provided in order to make easy to start developing Skycoin. It comes with the compiler, linters, debugger and the vim editor among other tools.
The skycoin/skycoindev-dind docker image comes with docker installed
and all tools available on skycoin/skycoindev-cli:develop
docker image.
Deprecated, avoid using this
Skycoin Integration Documentation
Add your node's ip:port
to the peers.txt file.
This file will be periodically uploaded to https://downloads.skycoin.net/blockchain/peers.txt
and used to seed client with peers.
Note: Do not add Skywire nodes to peers.txt
.
Only add Skycoin nodes with high uptime and a static IP address (such as a Skycoin node hosted on a VPS).
See the newcoin tool README
The coin hour burn factor is the denominator in the ratio of coinhours that must be burned by a transaction. For example, a burn factor of 2 means 1/2 of hours must be burned. A burn factor of 10 means 1/10 of coin hours must be burned.
The coin hour burn factor can be configured with a USER_BURN_FACTOR
envvar. It cannot be configured through the command line.
USER_BURN_FACTOR=999 ./run-client.sh
This burn factor applies to user-created transactions.
To control the burn factor in other scenarios, use -burn-factor-unconfirmed
and -burn-factor-create-block
.
USER_MAX_TXN_SIZE=1024 ./run-client.sh
This maximum transaction size applies to user-created transactions.
To control the transaction size in other scenarios, use -max-txn-size-unconfirmed
and -max-txn-size-create-block
.
To control the max block size, use -max-block-size
.
Transaction and block size are measured in bytes.
USER_MAX_DECIMALS=4 ./run-client.sh
This maximum transaction size applies to user-created transactions.
To control the maximum decimals in other scenarios, use -max-decimals-unconfirmed
and -max-decimals-create-block
.
Skycoin URIs obey the same rules as specified in Bitcoin's BIP21.
They use the same fields, except with the addition of an optional hours
parameter, specifying the coin hours.
Example Skycoin URIs:
skycoin:2hYbwYudg34AjkJJCRVRcMeqSWHUixjkfwY
skycoin:2hYbwYudg34AjkJJCRVRcMeqSWHUixjkfwY?amount=123.456&hours=70
skycoin:2hYbwYudg34AjkJJCRVRcMeqSWHUixjkfwY?amount=123.456&hours=70&label=friend&message=Birthday%20Gift
Wire protocol user agent description
We have two branches: master
and develop
.
develop
is the default branch and will have the latest code.
master
will always be equal to the current stable release on the website, and should correspond with the latest release tag.
api
- REST API interfaceapi/webrpc
- JSON-RPC 2.0 API [deprecated]cipher
- cryptographic librarycli
- CLI librarycoin
- blockchain data structuresdaemon
- top-level application manager, combining all components (networking, database, wallets)daemon/gnet
- networking librarydaemon/pex
- peer managementvisor
- top-level blockchain database layervisor/blockdb
- low-level blockchain database layervisor/historydb
- low-level blockchain database layer for historical blockchain metadatawallet
- wallet file management
Skycoin implements client libraries which export core functionality for usage from other programming languages.
lib/cgo/
- libskycoin C client library ( overview, API reference )
For further details run make docs
to generate documetation and read the corresponding README and API references.
make test
There are integration tests for the CLI and HTTP API interfaces. They have two run modes, "stable" and "live.
The stable integration tests will use a skycoin daemon whose blockchain is synced to a specific point and has networking disabled so that the internal state does not change.
The live integration tests should be run against a synced or syncing node with networking enabled.
make integration-test-stable
or
./ci-scripts/integration-test-stable.sh -v -w
The -w
option, run wallet integrations tests.
The -v
option, show verbose logs.
The live integration tests run against a live runnning skycoin node, so before running the test, we need to start a skycoin node:
./run-daemon.sh
After the skycoin node is up, run the following command to start the live tests:
./ci-scripts/integration-test.live.sh -v
The above command will run all tests except the wallet related tests. To run wallet tests, we
need to manually specify a wallet file, and it must have at least 2 coins
and 256 coinhours
,
it also must have been loaded by the node.
We can specify the wallet by setting two environment variables: WALLET_DIR
and WALLET_NAME
. The WALLET_DIR
represents the absolute path of the wallet directory, and WALLET_NAME
represents the wallet file name.
Note: WALLET_DIR
is only used by the CLI integration tests. The GUI integration tests use the node's
configured wallet directory, which can be controlled with -wallet-dir
when running the node.
If the wallet is encrypted, also set WALLET_PASSWORD
.
export WALLET_DIR="$HOME/.skycoin/wallets"
export WALLET_NAME="$valid_wallet_filename"
export WALLET_PASSWORD="$wallet_password"
Then run the tests with the following command:
make integration-test-live
or
./ci-scripts/integration-test-live.sh -v -w
Run specific test case:
It's annoying and a waste of time to run all tests to see if the test we real care
is working correctly. There's an option: -r
, which can be used to run specific test case.
For exampe: if we only want to test TestStableAddressBalance
and see the result, we can run:
./ci-scripts/integration-test-stable.sh -v -r TestStableAddressBalance
Golden files are expected data responses from the CLI or HTTP API saved to disk. When the tests are run, their output is compared to the golden files.
To update golden files, use the -u
option:
./ci-scripts/integration-test-live.sh -v -u
./ci-scripts/integration-test-stable.sh -v -u
We can also update a specific test case's golden file with the -r
option.
Coverage is automatically generated for make test
and integration tests run against a stable node.
This includes integration test coverage. The coverage output files are placed in coverage/
.
To merge coverage from all tests into a single HTML file for viewing:
make check
make merge-coverage
Then open coverage/all-coverage.html
in the browser.
Some tests can only be run with a live node, for example wallet spending tests. To generate coverage for this, build and run the skycoin node in test mode before running the live integration tests.
In one shell:
make run-integration-test-live-cover
In another shell:
make integration-test-live
After the tests have run, CTRL-C to exit the process from the first shell.
A coverage file will be generated at coverage/skycoin-live.coverage.out
.
Merge the coverage with make merge-coverage
then open the coverage/all-coverage.html
file to view it,
or generate the HTML coverage in isolation with go tool cover -html
All .go
source files should be formatted goimports
. You can do this with:
make format
Install prerequisites:
make install-linters
Run linters:
make lint
A full CPU profile of the program from start to finish can be obtained by running the node with the -profile-cpu
flag.
Once the node terminates, a profile file is written to -profile-cpu-file
(defaults to cpu.prof
).
This profile can be analyzed with
go tool pprof cpu.prof
The HTTP interface for obtaining more profiling data or obtaining data while running can be enabled with -http-prof
.
The HTTP profiling interface can be controlling with -http-prof-host
and listens on localhost:6060
by default.
See https://golang.org/pkg/net/http/pprof/ for guidance on using the HTTP profiler.
Some useful examples include:
go tool pprof http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/profile?seconds=10
go tool pprof http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/heap
A web page interface is provided by http/pprof at http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/.
Dependencies must not require cgo
. This means dependencies cannot be wrappers around C libraries.
Requiring cgo
breaks cross compilation and interferes with repeatable (deterministic) builds.
Critical cryptographic dependencies used by code in package cipher
are archived inside the cipher
folder,
rather than in the vendor
folder. This prevents a user of the cipher
package from accidentally using a
different version of the cipher
dependencies than were developed, which could have catastrophic but hidden problems.
Dependencies are managed with dep.
To install dep
for development:
go get -u github.com/golang/dep/cmd/dep
dep
vendors all dependencies into the repo.
If you change the dependencies, you should update them as needed with dep ensure
.
Use dep help
for instructions on vendoring a specific version of a dependency, or updating them.
When updating or initializing, dep
will find the latest version of a dependency that will compile.
Examples:
Initialize all dependencies:
dep init
Update all dependencies:
dep ensure -update -v
Add a single dependency (latest version):
dep ensure github.com/foo/bar
Add a single dependency (more specific version), or downgrade an existing dependency:
dep ensure github.com/foo/bar@tag
There are 4 configuration modes in which you can run a skycoin node:
- Development Desktop Daemon
- Server Daemon
- Electron Desktop Client
- Standalone Desktop Client
This mode is configured via run-client.sh
$ ./run-client.sh
The default settings for a skycoin node are chosen for Server Daemon
, which is typically run from source.
This mode is usually preferred to be run with security options, though -disable-csrf
is normal for server daemon mode, it is left enabled by default.
$ ./run-daemon.sh
To disable CSRF:
$ ./run-daemon.sh -disable-csrf
This mode configures itself via electron-main.js
This mode is configured by compiling with STANDALONE_CLIENT
build tag.
The configuration is handled in cmd/skycoin/skycoin.go
The compiled wallet source should be checked in to the repo, so that others do not need to install node to run the software.
Instructions for doing this:
- If the
master
branch has commits that are not indevelop
(e.g. due to a hotfix applied tomaster
), mergemaster
intodevelop
- Compile the
src/gui/static/dist/
to make sure that it is up to date (see Wallet GUI Development README) - Update all version strings in the repo (grep for them) to the new version
- If changes require a new database verification on the next upgrade, update
src/skycoin/skycoin.go
'sdbVerifyCheckpointVersion
value - Update
CHANGELOG.md
: move the "unreleased" changes to the version and add the date - Update files in
docker/images/mainnet/repo-info/remote/
, adding a new file for the new version and adjusting any configuration text that may have changed - Merge these changes to
develop
- Follow the steps in pre-release testing
- Make a PR merging
develop
intomaster
- Review the PR and merge it
- Tag the
master
branch with the version number. Version tags start withv
, e.g.v0.20.0
. Sign the tag. If you have your GPG key in github, creating a release on the Github website will automatically tag the release. It can be tagged from the command line withgit tag -as v0.20.0 $COMMIT_ID
, but Github will not recognize it as a "release". - Make sure that the client runs properly from the
master
branch - Release builds are created and uploaded by travis. To do it manually, checkout the
master
branch and follow the create release builds instructions.
If there are problems discovered after merging to master
, start over, and increment the 3rd version number.
For example, v0.20.0
becomes v0.20.1
, for minor fixes.
Performs these actions before releasing:
make check
make integration-test-live
(see live integration tests) both with an unencrypted and encrypted wallet, and once with-networking-disabled
go run cmd/cli/cli.go checkdb
against a synced node- On all OSes, make sure that the client runs properly from the command line (
./run-client.sh
and./run-daemon.sh
) - Build the releases and make sure that the Electron client runs properly on Windows, Linux and macOS.
- Use a clean data directory with no wallets or database to sync from scratch and verify the wallet setup wizard.
- Load a test wallet with nonzero balance from seed to confirm wallet loading works
- Send coins to another wallet to confirm spending works
- Restart the client, confirm that it reloads properly
Releases are signed with this PGP key:
0x5801631BD27C7874
The fingerprint for this key is:
pub ed25519 2017-09-01 [SC] [expires: 2023-03-18]
10A7 22B7 6F2F FE7B D238 0222 5801 631B D27C 7874
uid GZ-C SKYCOIN <[email protected]>
sub cv25519 2017-09-01 [E] [expires: 2023-03-18]
Keybase.io account: https://keybase.io/gzc
Follow the Tor Project's instructions for verifying signatures.
If you can't or don't want to import the keys from a keyserver, the signing key is available in the repo: gz-c.asc.
Releases and their signatures can be found on the releases page.
Instructions for generating a PGP key, publishing it, signing the tags and binaries: https://gist.github.com/gz-c/de3f9c43343b2f1a27c640fe529b067c
Security flaws in skycoin source or infrastructure can be sent to [email protected]. Bounties are available for accepted critical bug reports.
PGP Key for signing:
-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----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=5fwW
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Key ID: 0x5801631BD27C7874
The fingerprint for this key is:
pub ed25519 2017-09-01 [SC] [expires: 2023-03-18]
10A7 22B7 6F2F FE7B D238 0222 5801 631B D27C 7874
uid GZ-C SKYCOIN <[email protected]>
sub cv25519 2017-09-01 [E] [expires: 2023-03-18]
Keybase.io account: https://keybase.io/gzc