DCR Blockchain

Setup

Before running any nodes, the environment has to be set up. This requires the following steps:

1. In the frontend directory, run command npm i to install the frontend dependencies.
2. In the backend/DCREngine directory, run command dotnet build to build the DCR engine.
3. In the backend/DCRApi directory, run command dotnet build to build the node APIs.
4. In the dns directory, run command dotnet run to start a DNS seeder server. This DNS server uses port 5000, and functions to supply a pre-defined list of semi-permanent seed nodes (stored in dns/network.json) to requesting nodes. By default, this list contains only a single node, running on IP address localhost:4300.

Starting a node

There are two types of nodes in this blockchain environment: Miner and FullNode. It is important that the first miner or full node uses port 4300. Afterwards when spinning up more nodes, you can use whatever port you would like. All nodes will run on address localhost.

Miner

A miner is responsible for receiving transactions, arranging these in blocks, and mining and propagating blocks throughout the network. To start a miner, run the start-miner.sh script like so: ./start-miner.sh [Port]. Example use case: ./start-miner.sh 4300 starts a miner process on port 4300.

FullNode

A full node is responsible for generating transactions and propagating these throughout the network. This node consists of a frontend user interface and a backend node process. To start a full node, run the start-fullnode.sh script like so: ./start-fullnode.sh [FrontendPort] [BackendPort]. Example use case: ./start-fullnode.sh 8080 4300 starts a frontend running on port 8080 and a full node process on port 4300.

Node Blockchain State

You can see the state of a node's blockchain in the blockchain[Port].json file, where Port is the port of the node which the blockchain relates to.

Running Tests

The tests can be ran in either the DCRApi or DCREngine directories by using the dotnet test command. To change the values of the evaluation tests in DCRApi change the following values in the constructor of EvaluationCompare.cs

_settings = new Settings()
{
    TimeToSleep = 0,
    SizeOfBlocks = int.MaxValue,
    NumberNeighbours = 1,
    Difficulty = 0,
    IsEval = true
};
_numBlocks = 50;
_sizeOfBlock = 1000;
_numEvalTransactions = 50000;