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interledgerjs / moneyd

Connect your machine to the Interledger
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connector ilp interledger local payment payment-channel xrp

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Moneyd

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ILP-enable your machine!

Interledger Networks

When moneyd was created, what we referred to as the Interledger livenet was a community-run network for research and development purposes. Today there is a well-established Interledger network based around wallet providers such as Gatehub, XRPTipBot, and Stronghold which we call the Interledger livenet.

Today's Interledger livenet makes it easy for anyone to get a payment pointer to receive Interledger payments, and has handled billions of micropayments. However, the wallets which now make up the livenet have not yet exposed moneyd-like direct Interledger access.

As a result, moneyd will only connect to a community network of connectors, not the Interledger livenet. The community network uses real money, but is not connected to Interledger-enabled wallets and businesses so we're not currently recommending it for production use-cases. However, Moneyd is still a useful tool for experimenting with Interledger for education and experimentation.

Quick Start

If you haven't already, read the Interledger Networks section above. Moneyd does not currently connect to the Interledger livenet.

If you already have an XRP account with 35 XRP or more, use the community network instructions. Otherwise, you can still follow the Testnet instructions. For development in an offline environment, you can run your own Local Testnet.

Test Network

You'll need:

npm install -g moneyd moneyd-uplink-xrp
moneyd --testnet xrp:configure
moneyd --testnet xrp:start

Give it a minute to initialize a channel, then you're done! A configuration file will be created in ~/.moneyd.test.json.

So long as that command is running, you'll have access to ILP via port 7768. To try it out, follow the Sending Payments section, and use the alternate endpoints listed for the testnet.

Community Network

You'll need:

Just run:

npm install -g moneyd moneyd-uplink-xrp
moneyd xrp:configure
moneyd xrp:start

Your XRP secret (or "seed") is the base58-encoded string that starts with an 's'.

Give it a minute to initialize a channel, then you're done! A configuration file will be created in ~/.moneyd.json.

So long as that command is running, you'll have access to ILP's community network via port 7768. For some commands you can do, look at Sending Payments. For more advanced usage of the moneyd command, look at Advanced Usage.

Local Test Network

If you're just doing local development, you may not care about being connected to any network. Moneyd allows you to run an isolated local test network for this scenario. Run:

npm install -g moneyd
moneyd local

This exposes ILP access via port 7768, but any application connected to this port will only be able to pay other applications on the same machine.

Cloud Test Network

A publically accessible test network can be created by deploying moneyd to Heroku. Use the button below to deploy an instance of moneyd running in local mode. Prior to completing the app deployment, Heroku will ask for two required fields: Setting the asset code (i.e, XRP, USD) and setting the asset scale.

Deploy

Once deployed, Heroku will provide you with a url to connect to your cloud moneyd which has the form heroku-app-name.herokuapp.com

A local moneyd instance can then be set up to connect to the Heroku instance using the following commands:

moneyd --testnet btp:configure

Follow the command-line prompts to configure the connection. When prompted for the BTP host of parent connector, enter the url provided by Heroku (heroku-app-name.herokuapp.com without the https://). Once the uplink has been configured, run the local moneyd instance

moneyd --testnet btp:start

Description

This repo contains an experimental ILP provider, allowing all applications on your computer to use funds on a community ILP network.

It works by creating a payment channel to an Interledger connector, and then running ilp-plugin-mini-accounts locally. Any plugin can connect to this mini-accounts instance by generating a random secret and authenticating via BTP to localhost:7768. By default, only connections from localhost are accepted. (See Environment Variables.)

The ilp-plugin repo is already designed to do this, so ilp-curl and many other tools will work right out of the box.

Because it's in early stages, don't use it with a ripple account that has too much money.

Uplinks

An uplink module wraps ILP plugins for Moneyd's use. They provide additional features such as payment channel management and configuration construction. At least one uplink must be installed to use Moneyd.

Example uplink modules:

moneyd-uplink-btp

This uplink comes packaged with moneyd by default. It is used to create a data only link (no settlement) to a parent connector instance that accepts connections using ilp-plugin-mini-accounts (such as another moneyd). The following commands are used to configure and run moneyd using the moneyd-uplink-btp:

moneyd btp:configure
moneyd btp:start

(See Cloud Test Network for example.)

Writing ILP Applications

One of the biggest reasons to run moneyd is that it lets you develop your own applications that run on top of Interledger. Connecting to Moneyd is as easy as installing ilp-plugin and adding a single line of code to your project:

const plugin = require('ilp-plugin')()

This Interledger Plugin is a connection to your Moneyd instance. You can then pass it into other modules to send payments through your Moneyd.

How Does "ilp-plugin" Work?

ilp-plugin has very simple default behavior. If you run require('ilp-plugin')(), it creates an instance of ILP Plugin BTP that connects to port 7768 on your local machine.

You can also customize the behavior of ilp-plugin using environment variables.

Advanced Usage

Command-Line Options

For any of the commands below, you can use a config file in a non-standard location with -c. If you have configured your moneyd instance with --testnet, then you should also add the --testnet flag to any commands specified in this section.

To view a complete list of the moneyd flags, run:

moneyd help

If you want to see the options for a specific command, pass --help. For example:

moneyd xrp:configure --help

Environment Variables

You can customize the behavior of moneyd using environment variables.

If you did the previous step on your remote server, then you don't need to run any special software to get moneyd on your local machine. Not only that, but you can grant access to Interledger to as many machines as you want!

Just forward the moneyd port 7768 to any machine where you want ILP access by using SSH local port forwarding:

ssh -N -L 7768:localhost:7768 user@example.com

Replace the user@example.com with the server on which you're running moneyd.

Reconciliation

If you crash or encounter a bug, you might find that your moneyd instance forgot to send a claim to its parent connector. This results in the parent connector thinking you owe it money, and refusing to forward any of your packets.

To fix this, just stop moneyd and run:

moneyd xrp:topup --amount 1000

You can adjust the amount if you need to reconcile more. The amount is represented in XRP drops; 1000000 is a single XRP so these amounts are typically kept quite small.

Account Info

You can get information about your XRP account's balance and outstanding payment channels. To access this information, run:

moneyd xrp:info

Clean Up Channels

Sometimes you want to get your money back out of a payment channel. Moneyd provides a tool to do this.

Closing a channel happens in two phases. First you mark the channel for closing. This sets an expiry on the channel. Next, once the expiry has passed, you can send another close transaction to get your funds back and delete the channel.

To mark channels for closing, run:

moneyd xrp:cleanup

Select the channels you'd like to close with <space> and then hit <enter>. If you run moneyd xrp:info you'll see that the channels now have expiries set.

Expect it to take an hour for the channel to be ready for closing; this gives the counterparty a chance to submit their best claim.

Once the hour is up, run cleanup again:

moneyd xrp:cleanup

This time, the channels should say ready to close. Mark them for closing, and this time they'll go away for good. Your XRP account will be credited the total channel capacity minus the current channel balance.

If you start moneyd and its previous channel is closing or closed, you need to set a new name to force a new channel to be opened. Follow the instructions on Multiple Instances to accomplish this.

Multiple Instances

Sometimes you want to run several instances of moneyd with for the same XRP account and parent connector.

In order to distinguish your instances of moneyd, set a unique "name" when you configure your uplink. This "name" will be a segment of your ILP address, so it must only use [A-Za-z0-9\-_~]. The "name" must be unique per parent BTP host.

You'll have to configure in advanced mode to prompt for the name. Don't forget to back up your old ~/.moneyd.json first. Then run configure for the currency you're using. For example, with XRP, run:

moneyd xrp:configure --advanced

And then when you're prompted for "name", put in the unique name that you want. This will force a fresh channel to be opened.

You can use as many different "name"s as you want. If you run out of XRP from opening up channels, just follow Clean Up Channels to reclaim it.

Sending Payments

Now that you have moneyd running, you can test it out by uploading a file to unhash. Unhash is a simple content-addressed file upload service based on ILP.

You'll use ILP Curl, which will connect to moneyd and send money to the unhash host.

npm install -g ilp-curl
echo "This is my example file" > example.txt

# use "https://unhash.ilp-test.com" if you're on the testnet"
ilp-curl -X POST https://alpha.unhash.io --data @example.txt
# --> {"digest":"ff5574cef56e644f3fc4d0311b15a3e95f115080bcc029889f9e32121fd60407"}

curl https://alpha.unhash.io/ff5574cef56e644f3fc4d0311b15a3e95f115080bcc029889f9e32121fd60407
# --> "This is my example file"

Now you've successfully sent an ILP payment to pay for a file upload! Another way to use ILP is with SPSP, the simple payment setup protocol. This next example will send a micropayment to $sharafian.com.

npm install -g ilp-spsp

# use "$spsp.ilp-test.com" if you're on the testnet
ilp-spsp send --receiver \$sharafian.com --amount 100

# --> paying 100 to "$sharafian.com"...
# --> sent!

You can browse Interledgerjs on Github to find more use cases.

Connector List

(Submit a PR to add your own connector here)