coincoin
is a cryptocurrency proof-of-concept implemented in Elixir. It's an umbrella project that focuses on the 2 main components of (most of) the existing cryptocurrencies: the blockchain and digital transactions.
It's goal is to be as simple as possible but complete enough to technically understand what's going on behind Bitcoin or Ethereum for example. It's also a way do dive more into Elixir and OTP.
Blockchains are P2P softwares. To start using coincoin
, we need to setup multiple nodes and connect them together.
You need Elixir installed. Clone this repository and run make release
.
To setup a 3 nodes blockchain, spawn 3 tabs in your terminal (node1, node2 and node3) and run:
- node1:
build/prod/rel/coincoin/bin/coincoin.run console
(defaults:PORT=4000 P2P_PORT=5000
) - node2:
PORT=4001 P2P_PORT=5001 build/prod/rel/coincoin/bin/coincoin.run console
- node3:
PORT=4002 P2P_PORT=5002 build/prod/rel/coincoin/bin/coincoin.run console
Then connect the nodes to create a P2P network:
$node2> Blockchain.connect("localhost:5000") # connect node2 to node1
$node3> Blockchain.connect("localhost:5001") # connect node3 to node2
This will setup a simple network:
node1 <--> node2 <--> node3
You can also use the robinmonjo/coincoin
docker image available on the docker hub:
docker run -it robinmonjo/coincoin
If you use Docker, in the Blockchain.connect/1
call make sure to pass your container IP address and that this address is reachable.
When started, coincoin
will start 3 apps:
blockchain
: a minimal blockchaintoken
: a minimal cryptocurrency implemented on top of the blockchainblockchain_web
: a web interface to manage nodes of the blockchain
To manipulate the blockchain and store random data in it using the iex
console checkout the blockchain
app. To do the same using a REST API, checkout the blockchain_web
app. And finally to play with a cryptocurrency and use the blockchain as a distributed ledger, checkout the token
app.
Lately I heard a lot about:
- how Elixir is awesome and is the future of complex system / web development
- how blockchain technology will be the next big thing
So what about building a cryptocurrency proof-of-concept in Elixir ?
As I'm sure about 1, I still have some doubts about 2 eventough technologies behind cryptocurrencies are exciting.
Also "coin-coin" in french is the noise of a duck (hence Scrooge McDuck)
Issues, suggestions and pull requests are very welcome 😊